The truth is that a family imploding is not a happy thing to watch, even a family that earned it.

There were sick children whose clinic went without supplies because of what Mildred took; there is nothing to celebrate in that, only a wrong that needed setting right.

And these were the people my own children were related to by blood, whatever the Hargraves thought of the blood in question.

So I took no victory laps.

I did the one thing that was mine to do — I told the truth, in the right rooms, with the evidence to back it — and then I turned my whole attention to the only project that mattered, which was two kids who needed to learn, all over again, that they were safe and wanted.

The Hargraves could collapse on their own time.