It was proof that she had bet money she didn’t have on my obedience, and I had the strange, cold satisfaction of watching her realize, in real time, that she had misjudged the one person in the family she had never bothered to actually know.

Brock turned on my mother.

“You told me that loan was handled.” “It would have been,” she said, desperate now, “if Katya had just signed.” “I’m not signing anything,” I said.

My mother’s knuckles whitened on the back of her chair.

“You’ve always been like this.

Cold.

Just like your father.” “My father didn’t steal,” I said.

It landed like a glass dropped on marble.