Veronica crossed her arms and sneered.

“Manuel signed that in front of me!

He’s just getting senile and forgetting!”

And that was when Carmen reached into her purse, and pulled out a small, worn leather notebook, and set it on the table.

Veronica’s confidence flickered.

“I may be old, Veronica,” Carmen said, and her voice rang clear and steady through the room, the voice of a woman who had been silent for months and was silent no longer, “but I kept my own ledger.

For eleven months, I wrote down every single dollar you gave us, every time you took our credit cards, the night you forced us out of our own bedroom, and every document you badgered my husband into signing.” She opened the notebook to a marked page, and Alvin could see, from where he sat, the tidy rows of a seamstress’s careful hand, dated and precise, filling page after page.