“But you’ve stayed, Adam. You didn’t like being poor any more than I did.” Cade got up and began pacing stiffly. “You know how I felt when my daddy lost everything? Like I’d been weeded out. The sad truth is that if you make it, most people don’t care how, but if you’re poor, well now, they just pity you and shake their heads.” His voice took on a rolling, angry cadence. “Hell, with money you can even get away with being liberal. But if you’re poor and liberal, people just think you’re peculiar. Oh, they’ll never be sure whether you’re a liberal because you’re poor or poor because you’re a liberal, but they’re damn sure it’s one or the other.

“Now you wonder why I tell you this.” Cade stopped to glower at me with a strange, transcendent rage. “It’s because I don’t ever intend to see my daughter beholden. I love her more than you could ever understand. I have no wife, no son to call my own, but by God I have Kris Ann. And I’ve always planned that she not need anything.

“But life has a way of surprising you. You can’t plan for everything. Lately some of my investments have gone a little sour. So I might need your help now.” His voice turned sarcastic. “You might even have to be a little bit of a success. That’s why I can’t let you ruin Henry Cantwell. Because if you turn up something that gets Henry indicted you’ll not only destroy my friend but your own reputation. And then you couldn’t find work as a bootblack.”

“Henry’s not your ward, Roland. And neither is Kris Ann, like it or not.”

Cade reddened. “I’m taking you off the Cantwell case. Tomorrow you’re going to march to your office, close the door, and start preparing for that Stafford trial.”

“All for Kris Ann and Henry.”

“For them, and for the firm.”

I shook my head. “No, Roland, it’s mostly for you. I’ve heard that speech about loving Kris Ann one too many times, when you’ve done your damnedest to leave her without any sense of herself outside of your world. That’s not love and never has been. It’s ownership.”

Cade was very still, as if holding back. Then, with a thin smile, he said softly, “But you didn’t take her north, did you, Adam?”

I stood. “You miserable sonofabitch—”

Kris Ann opened the front door to announce dinner, saw our faces, and stopped in mid-sentence. Cade murmured, “We’ll finish this at the firm,” and then looked to Kris Ann and said in a different voice, “We’re coming, honey.”