“Remember a few weeks ago I asked Siri about the origin of the word capisce?” Kenny asks, resting his chin on steepled fingers. He looks professorial today, in a fashionable beige cardigan with leather buttons and suede elbow patches. Exactly what I’d imagine my English 101 teacher would look like at SCC. “Well, I googled it, and it turns out it comes from the Italian capisci, which means ‘to understand,’ which itself comes from the Latin capers, which means ‘to seize, grasp, take.’ I love that. The idea of understanding being linked to the idea of taking something. We seize knowledge when we understand. Interesting on so many levels, right?”

I’m not sure whether I find this interesting. I didn’t come here for a vocab lesson; that was Linda’s job. What I want to know is if he thinks I will or should be charged with a felony.

I nod anyway, hoping that speeds things along.

“Legally speaking, you didn’t understand,” Kenny says. “No capisce. Not really. You might have had a sense that not all was kosher, but you can’t be charged for that. A strange SAT experience and an out-of-context email and call do not make a criminal case for fraud.” A high-pitched noise escapes my throat. A strangled sigh, an exhalation of relief. “I think the US attorney’s office was posturing even more than I realized.”

“But what about the fact that I saw the file and decided not to say anything?” I ask, because that’s the part that has been hardest to swallow. I might have told Isla that I didn’t know, but that was a technicality. I didn’t know-know, until finally, I did.

I knew.

“Nope. The crime had already been committed. Ethically speaking, you should have said something then, but legally it’s a different story. Either way, you didn’t have a chance, because the raid happened literally the next day,” he says.

“So I’m in the clear, legally speaking?”

“Yes. Based on what you’ve told me, yes. But clients lie to me and to themselves all the time.”

“I might have been aggressively oblivious, but I’m not lying,” I say.

“Did you know I have kids?” Kenny asks, apropos of nothing. I’m surprised. His cell phone lock screen is a generic picture—a fishing boat in the middle of a bright blue sea. My dad’s, on the other hand, is a picture of our family from about thirteen years ago—me, Hudson, and Isla at Disneyland. Hudson, in metal braces and the oily, pimply throes of puberty, is squished up against Mickey Mouse. Though it’s clear he doesn’t want to have his photo taken, he’s smiling anyway, even matching Mickey’s thumbs-up. I figured the fishing boat meant Kenny lived alone. “Two boys, actually. Both went to UPenn and UPenn Law. Really great, smart kids.”