Chapter 1

This was the tenth time I had taken my mother, Claudia Calmann, to court.

When the judge's gavel came down, I didn't even blink. I lost, exactly as I'd expected.

Whispers rippled through the gallery behind me. Every eye in the room felt like a needle, sharp with contempt and confusion.

I stood up without any expression, gathered the few thin pages of "evidence" from the table, and walked out of the defendant's seat.

A pair of sympathetic bailiffs were helping my mother to her feet. She sobbed as if her heart were breaking.

"Lorna, I don't blame you," she cried. "Come home with me. It's not safe out there."

Camera flashes swallowed her whole. She dabbed at her tears, looking up at me with an expression of fragile, wounded innocence.

The reporters swung their cameras around and cut off my path at the courthouse doors. "Lorna Calmann, this is the tenth time you've sued your own mother. Why are you so determined to keep doing this?"

"A neighbor confirmed your mother scrapes by collecting recyclables, denying herself food and clothes just to save every cent for you. Doesn't your conscience bother you at all?"

"Have you considered your mother's feelings? She was just in that courtroom pleading for leniency on your behalf."

Microphones jabbed at my face from every direction. I pushed through the crowd and kept walking without a word.

Then a young woman in thick black-framed glasses, clearly new to the job, shoved her way to the front. Her microphone nearly jabbed me in the face.

"Ms. Calmann, I'm Kate Britcher with Frontline Report.

"I only want to ask one question. You've sued your own mother for ten years straight, and lost every single time. What's the point? Is this just for attention?"

I stopped walking and looked at her. She was young, and there was a sharpness in her eyes, the particular scrutiny of someone who took her job seriously.

I studied her calmly until it unnerved her enough that the hand holding her microphone dropped a little.

"Ms. Britcher, is it?" I said slowly. "Do you believe what you see?"

Kate blinked, clearly not expecting me to turn the question back on her. She pushed her glasses up and answered in her most professional tone, "I only believe in evidence and verdicts."

I nodded and gave her a faint smile. "In other words, do you want to know the truth?"

She blinked again, then nodded hard, the eagerness and curiosity plain on her face.

Through a gap in the crowd, I glanced back at my mother, still weeping for the cameras. Then I turned back and leaned close to Kate's ear, my voice pitched so only the two of us could hear.

"Don't interview me. Follow my mother instead."

Kate's pupils shrank. "What do you mean?"

"I mean I'm handing you an exclusive." I looked her dead in the eye. "Starting tomorrow, you follow her in secret. Twenty-four hours a day, camera never off her. Ten days is all you need."

Her expression slid from confusion into disbelief. She probably thought I'd lost my mind.

"Ms. Calmann, that's illegal. We can't do this," she started.

"You can," I cut her off. "I know you people always find a way. A destitute mother, scraping by on scavenged trash, sued for ten years straight by her own daughter. That's exactly the kind of story you people love, isn't it?"