Parole was denied. Twenty-four month set-off, which means we will do this again in two years, and again after that, and probably again when I am sixty and my daughter has a life somewhere else and has to fly back or write something.

That’s the part nobody tells you. It doesn’t end with a verdict. It becomes a thing your family does periodically, forever, like a dentist appointment, except it is this.

Chapter 16 — Every Number

We sold the house in August.

I should have written about this earlier and I kept not doing it, because it is the least dramatic and most humiliating part.

When the court recognized that Daniel survived Lake Cumberland, the insurer came for the payout. Four hundred and twelve thousand dollars, paid to me in 2017, on a policy Michael Reeves had helpfully processed.

They were not villains about it. A woman named Denise handled the file and was decent to me on the phone eleven times. It is simply what happens: the policy paid on a death that had not occurred, and a court had now found so, and the money had to come back.