“I was in my second year of law school when I got a call from my sister saying that Dad had been arrested. I had to come home from Marquette to see him. He denied everything, and I was right by his side. An elderly client with no heirs, a friend of my father’s for years, had passed away and left a sizable estate, worth half a million dollars, to an Alzheimer’s charity in honor of his wife, whom he had nursed through the disease. The amount that went into the charity was little more than fifty thousand dollars, and the charity, promised ten times that, looked into it. They found that my dad had charged the man his full hourly rate for all the times he’d visited and all the lunches and phone calls. Add to that administrative fees paid out as the executor of the estate, and he collected just under four hundred thousand dollars from the man. An exorbitant fee, and I asked my dad about it, many times, and he always had an answer, he denied stealing a cent from this man that wasn’t owed him…but over time it became evident that my father had defrauded this man’s estate. He had violated his position as attorney and executor. And this was a good friend of his. My dad convinced himself that he had done nothing improper or illegal.

“The scandal changed everything at home. I left Marquette for half a year and helped defend him when he refused to negotiate a guilty plea. We won him a reduced sentence in the end, and I felt shitty doing it. He was disbarred, had to make full restitution to the Alzheimer’s charity—which bankrupted my parents—and was sentenced to thirty months in prison.”

She looked at Blackwood, who listened without judgment, but also without any sympathy. The few people to whom she had told this story tripped over themselves to reassure her that her father’s crime wasn’t her fault, and that she should feel no shame because of what he did, but Blackwood simply listened.