And it was Carmen — not Arthur Sr. with his twenty-four percent, not any of the important people gathered under that canopy in their fine clothes — who was willing to stand up, alone, before the entire assembled family and all its powerful friends, and tell the truth, knowing exactly what it would cost her.

Consider what she risked.

She was a working woman with a son to protect, and the man she was about to expose had already shown he would threaten that son to control her.

She could have stayed silent.

Silence would have been the safe choice, the sensible choice, the choice almost anyone in her position would have made.

Instead she gathered her evidence, and kept her little ledger of red stars for years at real risk to herself, and when the moment came she walked out of that kitchen and spoke.