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.

I have done it for a living. I have coached nineteen-year-olds through doing it. Doing it on my own behalf, about my own life, in front of my own parents, is a different animal entirely and my hands were not steady when it was over.

Then Judge Ferro began going through the bundle.

She turned a page. Then another.

Then she stopped, and she stayed on one page for what I would estimate was ten seconds, which in a courtroom is an extremely long time.

The room went quiet in stages. Slaught stopped mid-sentence and did not start again. My parents looked at each other.

And Judge Amabel Ferro looked up over her glasses, directly at me, and said:

Hold on. You’re Major Ardmore?