Ravenna cooperated fully with prosecutors and received a suspended sentence for her testimony — she had, in the end, handed over the piece that closed the case.

Leontyne had to liquidate her luxury assets to cover the private debts my trusts had quietly stopped carrying.

Corvina shut down her channels for good after the video of her mocking me went everywhere.

And Horatio — my father-in-law, the man whose surgery I had paid for — sent me a long handwritten letter from his recovery facility, admitting that he had seen my quiet sadness for years and said nothing, to keep the peace.

His letter affected me more than I expected, and not in the way he’d hoped.

Horatio was the only member of that family who had ever shown me something like kindness — small kindnesses, a warm word here and there, a sympathetic look across a table when Leontyne was at her worst.