Not out of mercy, exactly — I was not feeling especially merciful — but because a spectacle would have made the story about her again, and she had already spent decades making everything about her.

The truest punishment I could hand my mother was not a photograph on a front page.

It was to let the plain, boring machinery of the law do its work while I turned my attention entirely to the people I actually loved.

I gave my statements.

I signed my affidavits.

I let the prosecutors do their jobs.

And then, most days, I closed the file and went to have dinner with my brother, which was the one outcome my mother had spent her whole life trying to prevent, and the only revenge I found I had any appetite for.

Chapter 15 — She Came Alone