“Are you okay, Dad?”

“I’m fine. How are you?”

He didn’t look fine. He looked pale in this sickly orange outfit, sitting in a room, that, admittedly, had decent natural light but smelled like that cheap floor cleaner they used at school. I just nodded. How was I? I felt kind of okay, but I thought it might hurt his feelings to say so. It wasn’t that I didn’t miss him. I did. It’s just that everything was always so busy around the mommune that sometimes I didn’t have much time to even think about how much my life had changed. When I’d told Alice that last night, she’d assured me my dad wouldn’t want me to be sad. I guessed that was true, but I still felt kind of guilty.

“Sweetie, we have some news,” Mom said.

I could tell from her face that it wasn’t great news. But, like, the worst had kind of happened. We were talking in a jail. So my expectations were low.

Oh my gosh. Merit is right. They had brought me here to tell me they were getting divorced.

“Okay,” I said, stalling. “Are we never getting the house back?”

Dad gave Mom a look I didn’t understand.

“Honey,” Dad said. “I wanted to be the one to tell you, face-to-face, that I did not do this.”

I exhaled a breath that I didn’t even know I was holding. “What?” Oh my gosh! They weren’t getting a divorce! Or if they were, they weren’t telling me. Although, if he was innocent, I couldn’t really see Mom divorcing him. “You didn’t?”

He shook his head. “I did not.”

“I knew you were innocent!” I said, rushing over to throw my arms around his neck.

“You did?” he said. His eyes filled with tears again.

“Of course, Dad. What are you even talking about?”

He nodded. “I’m so relieved. I know it’s confusing when everyone is telling you something and you don’t know what to believe.”

I settled back into my seat. “Okay—but, Dad, if you’re innocent, why are you here?”

“Well, you know how sometimes we initiate client statements ourselves and sometimes they come directly from the funds our clients are invested in?”

I nodded. I knew very well because I had worked at my dad’s office on and off since I was, like, eight years old. In actuality, I worked for him to put in enough face time to justify the Roth IRA he funded for me each year, but he had also taught me plenty of bits and pieces along the way. “Yes. Sure.”

I had seen Dad’s support staff work on those statements hundreds of times.