Exhibit A Persists

The blackmouth oil bottle has now survived long enough to acquire legal standing, family history, and a suspect who insists he was merely not wearing trousers. Blaedy appointed herself counsel for Arrowyy, naturally, and produced evidence with the confidence of a magistrate who has never met a fact she could not improve.

I tried, briefly, to deny the boy. Town Hall’s papers made that impossible. So did the speed with which concern arrived when he made a dark joke. Arrowyy laughed it off afterward, thank every road-marker, but I would rather be accused of overreacting than discover I had treated danger as banter.

Blaedy calls this fatherly instinct. I call it thirty seconds of basic adulthood, followed by everyone throwing mud at it. Fair enough. The bottle remains Exhibit A, and no one is inheriting it.