So the arrangement, on a Tuesday morning in a public building in Chicago, was: a woman, her sister whom she had accused in writing of orchestrating an injury to a child, that sister’s husband who had broken the child’s femur, and their parents — in one room, with a muted television, for four hours, waiting to be told it was not happening today.

You do not talk.

That is the etiquette and everybody arrives at it independently within about three visits.

You bring something to read that you do not read.

You go and stand by the window at different times.

The second time, in the November of 2022, my mother tried to make us sit together and it was unbearable for about nine minutes and she never tried again.

The eleventh time, in the July of 2023, Perla went to the vending machine and came back and put a bottle of water on the chair next to me without saying anything and went and sat down at the other end.