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Roderick Matheson was kept for twelve days in “interrogative detention” in a state facility within a mile of the State Court of Appeals. He was allowed to see only his attorneys and his distraught wife.

Then, abruptly, he was released.

And made to resign his judgeship. And made to surrender to the state most of his accumulated savings and investments. So the family was plunged into debt. Virtually overnight, into debt. So he and Mother were forced to sell their house in the most prestigious suburb of the capital; and their summer cottage on the Atlantic coast in Kennebunkport, Maine; and all but one of their several cars; and their yacht; and Mother’s several fur coats; and certain items of jewelry; and other expensive possessions. Why? we children asked, and Mother said bitterly, Because your father’s enemies are jealous of him, because they’re vicious men who’ve banded together to destroy him.

We were forbidden to ask further questions. We were forbidden to see newspapers or newsmagazines, watch TV or listen to the radio. Immediately at the time of Father’s arrest we were taken by Mother out of our private schools and forbidden to communicate with even our closest friends by telephone or E-mail. Mother insisted we remain in the house; Mother insisted upon knowing where we were every minute and became hysterical if one of us was missing, furious when we returned. Home, she shut herself away from us to talk on the phone for hours. (To Father? To Father’s attorneys? To attorneys of her own? For it seemed for a while that there was a possibility of separation, divorce.) Mother’s high shrill plaintive demanding incredulous quavering voice raised as we’d never heard it before. How can this be happening to me! I deserve better for God’s sake! I am innocent for God’s sake! And my children—what will their lives be, now?

We were spoiled, indulged children. We didn’t know it at the time, not even Graeme knew it at the time; of course we were spoiled, indulged, the children of rich, powerful, socially ambitious parents. Even the ten-year-old twins Neale and Ellen with their sweet, innocent faces and astonished eyes. Our privileged lives of clothes and computers and private lessons (tennis, ballet, horseback riding), our pride in knowing we were the children of Judge Roderick Matheson of whom so much was said; our lives so like play-lives, and not real lives at all; changed suddenly and irrevocably as the lives of children glimpsed on TV who have suffered natural disasters like earthquakes, famine, war. And so Father himself looked, when he returned to us, the shock of blond-brown hair on his forehead now laced with silver, his cheeks gaunt, his eyes glassy and his once-handsome mouth like something mashed, like one, formerly a prince, who has survived, but only just barely, a natural disaster.

We shrank from him, and from Mother. We were frightened of Mother’s changeable moods. For she might stare through us wide-eyed in fear and dismay, her once-beautiful hazel-green eyes swollen from weeping; or she might rush to embrace us, giving a little cry of pain—Oh, oh! Oh, what will we do? At such times Mother gave off a scent of sweet perfume commingled with perspiration; her breath smelled of—what? Wine, bourbon? Sometimes it was us, her children, whom she wished to comfort; at other times it seemed to be herself she wished to comfort; sometimes she was angry at Father, and sometimes at Father’s enemies; sometimes, for no reason we could comprehend, she was angry at us. Especially Rosalind, who at fourteen and a half, a lanky, long-limbed girl with frowning eyes, had a stubborn way of seeming to be thinking for herself, furrowing her brow and sucking at her lips, brooding silent in that space where even a mother can’t follow. So if Rosalind stiffened in Mother’s arms, nearly as tall as Mother now, Mother might lean back to sure into her face, gripping Rosalind’s shoulders with red-gleaming talon-sharp fingernails and pushing Rosalind from her—What’s wrong with