My son froze my cards so I couldn’t even buy groceries. He thinks he controls our $42 million empire—but one call from the bank made me realize he has no idea what I’m about to do. First my credit card declined. Then my debit.

Karen cried eventually, but not from remorse. She cried because she was losing access. I know the difference. There are tears that rise from shame and tears that rise from thwarted entitlement. Hers were the second kind. Miriam watched her with no visible emotion at all, which was perhaps the cruelest possible mercy.

When it was over, Desmond lingered a moment after his attorney had packed up.

“Mom,” he said.

I waited.

His face shifted then, and for one wild second I saw the boy again. Not the man. The boy. The child who used to run into the showroom after school and beg to sit in the driver’s seat of the newest model. The teenager who once slept on a cot in Warren’s hospital room because he refused to go home. The young father crying the first time Emma wrapped her hand around his thumb.

Then the moment passed.

“You didn’t have to humiliate me,” he said.

Humiliate.