When Judge Elden Marwick looked down at my coffee-stained apron, asking if my ‘genius brain’ could count beyond ten, and let my parents laugh as if they were already burying me, he didn’t know that the woman they were mocking had a tape recorder in her pocket, a Harvard law degree in her briefcase, and a grandmother who had prepared a final trap specifically for rooms like this.

I looked exactly like what they wanted me to look like. I turned my head toward the plaintiff’s table. There they were.

Calvin and Blair Henshaw. My parents. My father, Calvin, threw his head back with a laugh that showed all his capped teeth.

He wore a charcoal suit that probably cost more than I had made in three years. Beside him, my mother dabbed theatrically at the corners of her eyes with a silk handkerchief, her pearls flashing under the fluorescent lights. They were not looking at me with anger.

Anger would have implied I still mattered enough to wound them. They were looking at me with delight, the way people look at a street performer who is flailing harder than expected. Judge Marwick waved a hand without even pretending to hide his own smile.

“Order.”