My parents sued me for the four point seven million dollars my grandmother left me, and to prove I was unstable their own attorney subpoenaed my service record and put it in front of the judge himself. He had read two pages of a hundred and forty. That is how my family found out what I do for a living.

He said he was not suggesting that.

I watched my mother's face while the email was being read out and I am not going to pretend I did not.

The claim was dismissed the same morning. Costs went against my parents, and Slaught's bill was already in the region of thirty-one thousand dollars.

PART 5

I have not spoken to my father since.

That is not a stand I have taken. He has not called and I have not called and it has now been long enough that the not-calling has become its own arrangement.

My mother called eleven days after the hearing.

She did not apologise. What she wanted to talk about was the three hundred and forty thousand dollars — specifically, whether I intended to do anything about it, and whether it was really necessary to involve anybody, and how it would look for Dashiell's business.

I told her that the estate's executor is Sowell Brink and that it is not my decision, which is true, and that I would not be intervening in either direction, which is also true.