The air went out of my lungs.

The “noise late at night” was me running the vacuum during the hours I couldn’t sleep from the stress, or my mother singing quietly to Nolan to distract him from the cold.

“In fact,” Carroway pressed, “didn’t you consider evicting her last month due to the squalor?”

“I did,” Abernathy lied. He’d threatened eviction over late rent, never over cleanliness — an apartment my mother kept spotless.

I looked at Grant. He was staring at the table, suppressing a satisfied smile.

In that horrifying moment I understood: Grant had paid him. Whether he’d covered my back rent or handed Abernathy a thick envelope of cash, my ex-husband had bought my landlord’s testimony to paint my poverty as a moral failing.