I thanked my grandfather for the $200 check. He froze mid-carving, looked me in the eye, and told me the gift he had given me was $500,000.

The detective nodded. She slid two forms across the table. Walter went first. He took a pen from his pocket. His hand trembled slightly as he hovered over the paper. I knew what he was feeling. He was signing a document admitting to failing to protect his assets and valuables. But he didn’t hesitate. He pressed the pen to the paper and signed his name in a firm, dark hand: Walter King.

Then he slid the papers toward me. I picked up the pen. It was heavy. The plastic barrel was cool to the touch. I looked at the signature line. I thought of Thanksgiving dinners from my childhood. I thought of bike rides with my father. I thought of my mother brushing my hair. I thought of the sister I shared a room with. If I signed this, those memories would be forever tainted. They would be the prologue to a tragedy. But then I thought of the empty bank account. I thought of the lies. I thought of the two-hundred-dollar check my mother had handed me, smiling as she picked my pocket. I realized the family I mourned didn’t exist. It was a fiction I maintained to keep myself warm. The reality was the people who had left me to rot.

I lowered my pen. I signed my name: Layla Alexander. The letters were sharp, angular, and final.

The detective took the papers. She gathered the evidence into a briefcase. She stood up. She said that from that point on, it was their job. She said my job was done. She said I had told the truth, and that was all I could do. We left the interrogation room. The air in the hallway seemed different. It was thinner. It was cleaner. We passed through the double glass doors and emerged into the parking lot. The sun broke through the clouds. The light was bright and sharp, reflecting off the windshields of the police cars. I stopped for a moment and looked at our reflection in the glass doors of the station house. I saw an older man in a suit and a young woman in a jacket. We looked like strangers. We looked like survivors. We were the only two members of the King family who chose the difficult path of truth over the easy path of deception. We paid for our honesty with our lineage.

Walter turned to me. He adjusted his hat. He looked tired, incredibly tired, but the shadow of shame that had hung over him the night before was gone. He smiled. It was a sad smile, full of regret, but at the same time filled with a deep, abiding respect. He spoke softly. He said that last night I had thanked him for the two hundred dollars. He paused, looking into my eyes. He said that today I had proven that I was worth far more than any sum he could ever transfer.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. I simply took his arm and we walked to the car together. I knew he was right. Five hundred thousand dollars was gone. The family was shattered. But as I walked along the asphalt, I felt a profound sense of wealth. I owned something they could never steal, counterfeit, or spend. I owned myself, and that was a fortune that would last me a lifetime.