I looked at the stapled slip under my hand.

It was an advance deposit receipt for three suites at the lake resort, printed four days earlier.

Every charge had a paper receipt filed away like a tidy lesson plan.

Mark had built a master file of his secondary spending while telling me we didn’t have forty dollars for two jars of peanut butter at the grocery store.

“Your father likes to keep records,” I said.

“Grandpa says good records keep people honest,” Ben said, scrubbing corn silk off a yellow cob.