Five minutes after my divorce was final, my father gripped my arm outside the courthouse and said, “Block every card, right now.” That night my ex tried to spend $300,000 on his mistress’s sapphire necklace with my company’s black card — in a club my firm owned.

My father took off his glasses.

“Here’s what I need you to decide, and you don’t have to decide it tonight. The four hundred and ten thousand is a crime. Wire fraud, embezzlement from a company he was a fiduciary of, structuring the transfers to avoid detection. I can hand this to people I know at the U.S. Attorney’s office and he’ll be charged, and it’ll be public, and it’ll take two years, and you’ll testify. Or you can keep it civil. Your lawyer sues the LLC and him, recovers what’s recoverable, and he becomes a man with a judgment against him instead of a man with a conviction. Civil’s faster. Criminal’s cleaner. I’ve done both. I’ll back whichever you pick.”

I thought about Trevor on the courthouse steps.

“Some women just don’t know how to keep a man.”

“How did you know?” I said. “On the steps. Five minutes after. How did you know to lock the cards?”