A guilty man with any discipline keeps the folder in a drawer.

But Julian needed me to see it — needed the failed little sister to understand, in detail, how thoroughly he had won — and so he sat there and walked me through every forged page of his own indictment, pointing out its features, waiting for me to be impressed.

And I was impressed, in a way: by how much evidence a vain man will hand you if you only let him believe he’s winning.

I turned the pages slowly, the way you’d admire someone’s work, and I let my face stay soft and defeated, and inside the cold clear place I catalogued what I was seeing, because they had handed me, with their own hands, the last pieces I needed.