Nothing happened for eleven weeks. That is the part nobody tells you. There is no scene after the door closes, only a case number and a woman in an office who is careful not to promise you anything.

My father was charged in March. Not my sister. The forged signature was his, on a trustee authorization dated four years before Ondine ever needed a car loan, which meant the ninety-five thousand had left in pieces long before anyone panicked. Ondine had been receiving it in fragments and calling it help. She had not known it was mine. When the investigator showed her the paper trail, she threw up in the hallway of the county building, and I was there, and I did not comfort her, and I have thought about that more often than I expected to.

He took a plea in October. Eighteen months suspended, full restitution, a felony that follows him. My mother was never charged and has never once acknowledged that she knew, though she signed as witness on two of the transfers.