“Then who is it for?”

And Odile said: “It’s for the record.”

Then she said the thing that ended the argument, and she said it quietly and without any accusation in it at all, which is what made it unanswerable.

“There was supposed to be a court.

“That’s what it’s for.

There’s a whole building for this.

There’s a judge and a docket and a number and somebody in a robe who says out loud, on a record, this person owed this and did not pay it. That’s what it’s for, Dad.

That’s the entire point of it.