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 put his glasses back in his pocket.

“Because when the judge read the prenup into the record and confirmed the business was yours, I watched his face,” he said. “Mari, a man who’s just lost a fight looks sad, or furious. Your ex-husband looked relieved. I’ve seen that face forty times across an interview table. It’s the face of a man who’s glad you’re all looking at the thing he wanted you to look at. The divorce was the thing he wanted you to look at. I spent thirty-one years learning to look at the other thing. So I grabbed your arm.”

“And the other thing was—”

“Four hundred and ten thousand dollars and an LLC named after his girlfriend.” My father stood up. “Lock the cards, I said. I should have said ‘and call a forensic accountant,’ but your father is a forensic accountant, so I waited until dinner. Now. It’s ten o’clock. Your ex-husband is standing in a club right now explaining to his girlfriend why the necklace went back in the case. Let him have his night. We’ll have the morning. Go to bed.”