“So go ahead.

Call them.” And the terrible thing was that he was, on the surface of it, right.

That was exactly what it would look like to a patrol officer responding to a call: a paperwork dispute, a registered deed, a signature, an absentee owner.

Everything my sister and Julian had done had been designed, carefully, to look legal, to hide a violent theft inside the dry machinery of property law, so that the very authorities I might call would look at the documents and side, at least at first, with them.

They had not just stolen my house.