Documentation was a field she could not fight on at all.

You cannot spin a wire transfer.

You cannot weep your way out of a forged signature.

By choosing the law, we chose the one arena where her weapons did not work.

But the second reason was deeper, and it was about Maya, not about my mother.

Because if I had driven to that house and torn the door off and screamed and raged, I would have taught my daughter something terrible in the very act of avenging her: that the way you respond to being wronged is with fury and chaos and force, that power is the thing that settles matters.

And Maya had already lived five years in a house governed by exactly that logic, the logic of the loudest and most frightening voice winning.