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.

And that judge was, at that moment, holding a page that said the beneficiary drafts them professionally.

That is why she stopped. It was not the rank. Judges are not impressed by rank, and Amabel Ferro has been on that bench for nineteen years and has seen everything.

She stopped because she had just listened to nineteen minutes about a woman who could not be trusted with money, and then turned a page and found out what that woman does for a living.

I have since read the transcript, which is a strange thing to do to your own life.