As Jared spoke, he never raised his voice. But some strong emotions are not dependent on volume. Jared delivered his in a soft quiver. As he continued, his voice began to crack.
“It wasn’t fair,” he said.
He said I had worked with a bookkeeper who’d stolen private information. He said that once I got involved in the case, I said false things about his father and, after the guilty plea, I made his father stay in prison longer than he was supposed to. He had it down to the exact number of additional days. Jared said I did all this because I was vindictive and ambitious and untrustworthy.
“This was a family matter,” Jared said, “a matter to be handled by the family or by the rabbis”—not by a hard-charging federal prosecutor.
Jared glanced at me, then fixed his gaze on his father-in-law, Donald. “How can he be trusted to handle the transition?”
