Not a plea.

An instruction, given in the flat, certain tone of someone who is finished.

But Faye’s call put the last piece in place, and it turned my stomach even through the armor.

The identity theft changed the scale of everything.

This was no longer only a matter of stolen money and a shattered marriage; it was federal, and it had my name on the loans, which meant that if I had done what they wanted — if I had stayed pliable, signed their papers, let it all be smoothed over as a tragic accident — I would not merely have been robbed.

I would have been left holding the criminal liability for their fraud, while they walked away clean with my grandfather’s money.