It had gone wrong because that afternoon I had been reviewing the quarterly statements for the Fairholm Trust — the inheritance my late grandfather had left to me, and me alone.

I had found discrepancies.

Small at first, well camouflaged: a few thousand here, a transfer there, dressed up as maintenance fees and tax escrows, all routed through a shell company I did not recognize.

What looked at first like a few thousand dollars turned out, when I followed it, to be the visible edge of something close to four hundred thousand.

When I raised it over the roast beef, the temperature in that dining room dropped so fast I could have seen my own breath.

I keep returning, in memory, to the exact moment the temperature changed, because it told me everything and I was too trained to read it at the time.