I was just trying to protect the house, that’s all, I was protecting it for the family!”

I walked over to where she lay, handcuffed, on the hardwood floor of the house she had gambled away and imprisoned our mother inside.

And I knelt down, not out of any tenderness, but for one specific purpose.

I reached out, and I unclasped our mother’s vintage pearl earrings from my sister’s lobes, gently, one and then the other, and I slid our father’s gold anniversary bracelet off her wrist.

I took them back.