For four years I welded pipe in a frozen oil-sands camp and sent nearly a hundred thousand dollars a year home to my family.

Then I came back without warning and found my wife with no hair, painfully thin, washing dishes alone in the backyard.

My mother said, “She did this to herself.” I didn’t raise my voice.

I took out my phone and told them about a compensation package that hid a trap none of them saw coming.

Chapter 1 — The House My Money Built

The taxi let me out at the end of the street, and for a moment I just stood there, proud.

Four years I’d been gone — twelve-hour shifts welding pipe at an oil-sands camp outside Fort McMurray, Alberta, through winters that hit thirty below, eating reheated dinners in a trailer I shared with six other men.

Every month I wired two thousand to twenty-five hundred dollars into my mother Carol’s account. More than a hundred thousand dollars, over four years.

It was supposed to build a home, protect our future, and make sure my wife, Della, was cared for while I was away.

The camp had shut down for a few weeks after a small fire halted production, and I’d used the break to come home and surprise everyone. Nobody knew I was coming.

And there it was: a gorgeous two-story house, a gleaming iron gate, a brand-new SUV in the drive, furniture I could see through the front window that looked straight out of a design magazine.

My sweat had bought all of it. I felt something swell in my chest — until I walked around the side of the house toward the laundry area and saw Della.

She was so thin her clothes hung off her like they’d been draped over nothing but bone. She wore a heavy wool hat, though the afternoon was warm.