Because she said it to hurt me, and she said it in front of forty people, and it was, on most days, true.
I did not turn around.
I sat at that table and held my father’s photograph and looked at the judge, and Judge Vireo looked back at me for what the transcript records as a pause.
Then she said: “Mr. Kemp, you may stand for this part if you’d like.”
“Your Honor, I’d rather sit.”
“Why is that?”
“Because if I stand up, ma’am,” I said, “I’ll have to put him down.”
PART 5 — FINAL
The court revoked Vonetta’s authority, voided the deed, and appointed me as my father’s guardian and conservator.
That was the Tuesday.
The trespass charge was dropped on the Thursday.
The criminal referral took fourteen months.
Vonetta pleaded to financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult and got probation, restitution, and a permanent record.
Royce pleaded to the original thefts — the ones I did three years for — which is how a thing like this actually ends in this country: not with a trumpet, but with a clerk entering a plea in an empty courtroom on a Wednesday afternoon.
I went to see Royce once.
County jail, forty minutes, through glass, eleven weeks after his plea.
