I pictured my mother sitting in her immaculate Minneapolis office with all the polished photographs of people who had worked for her, feared her, and eventually learned to answer questions carefully.

“Eleanor.”

“Yes,” she said.

“I warned her that if she made a claim against the family, our attorneys would respond.”

“You were speaking for me.”

“I was keeping a complicated situation from becoming a scandal.”

“Two children spent their first two and a half years believing someone else was their only father.

Their mother believed I’d agreed to threaten her.