It is only the total that does, and the whole design depends on your never sitting down to add it up.

I added mine up because adding things up is the only thing I have ever truly known how to do.

Chapter 2 — The Books I Hid Under a Cushion

At nine o’clock we moved into the living room, where the radiator hissed against the cold salt air that drifted in off the harbor at Cape May every night.

I sat on the green velvet sofa and took my forensic accounting journal out of my leather bag, and Jonathan, standing by the fireplace with his shoulder against the dark wood of the mantel, looked at the soft cover of it the way a man looks at a competitor.

“Must you always bring your work home?” he asked.