“He’s not stable, Your Honor,” my father said, pointing at me like I wasn’t even human. I smiled. Because the judge didn’t know that three minutes earlier, I had pressed record. And my father didn’t know the document in his briefcase was the last mistake he would ever make. When I finally spoke, the courtroom went silent. “Go ahead,” I said softly. “Tell them everything.”
“She is mentally unfit to manage her own affairs, Your Honor.” My father, Richard Collins, said it smoothly, like a man reading a grocery list. He dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief, performing grief for the judge, for the packed gallery of relatives he’d personally invited. Aunts. Cousins. People who had already decided I…
