On the back: For Katya.

Never let them take your roots.

Back at Bettina’s office we played the cassette through a converter.

Static, and then my mother’s voice, younger and colder, threatening Dell Pratt into silence — telling him that if he ever came near the family she would destroy him with a lie no one would question, that my father believed the boy was his and it would stay that way, that Dell had no money and no standing and should disappear. He’s my son, Dell’s voice said, breaking. No, my mother answered. He’s my security. And then, chilling in its flatness: And if Katya ever asks about her grandmother’s house, I’ll handle her too. I stopped the tape there.

I did not need the rest, and Fergus did not need to hear one more second of the woman who had raised him pricing out the people she was supposed to love.