I did not let that stop me.

I owed my mother more than I owed the memory of a sister who no longer existed.

But I will not pretend it cost me nothing to sit in that box and, sentence by careful sentence, help send my sister to prison.

It cost me a great deal.

It was simply a cost worth paying, because on the other side of it was my mother’s safety, and there is no price I would not have paid for that.

The fortress of forged paper that had been built to make an armed theft look like a lawful transaction became, in the end, the very thing that convicted them, because forged paper, examined by people who know how to examine it, does not lie for long.