I came home from the funeral to tell my parents and sister that my husband had left me $8.5m and 6 Manhattan lofts. When I walked into the house, I overheard my parents talking. What they were saying… made my blood run cold.

“Your grandmother held on for three more years after I filed that counter petition,” Helen says. “She used to talk about you. Said you were the one in the family who got out.”

She reaches across the table and squeezes my hand.

“Nathan sounds like he was a good man.”

“He was.”

“Then don’t let them take what he built for you.”

I drive back to Ridgewood with the windows up and the radio off, turning Helen’s words over like stones.

James meets with Reverend Thomas Harris on Thursday morning. I’m not there. I can’t be. Not without tipping off my parents. But James calls me afterward from his car.

“He’s in,” James says.

Reverend Harris is 58, ordained for 30 years, and the kind of man who shakes your hand with both of his. He’s led Rididgewood Community Church since before Gerald became treasurer. He’s also a former auditor for the Episcopal Dascese, which means he reads financial statements the way most people read menus.

James showed him Maggie’s preliminary numbers, the $47,200 discrepancy, the 47 transactions, the routing to Gerald’s personal account.

“He didn’t say a word for two full minutes,” James tells me. “Then he said, 12 years I trusted that man.”