Paige reviewed the outline with me.

“She would like this,” she said.

“How can you be sure?”

“Because she would immediately complain that your budget has too many columns.”

For the first time since the funeral, the money stopped feeling like evidence of her death.

It began to look like a tool she had placed in my hands.

On the day I paid off the first loan, I waited for a sense of triumph.

What I felt instead was a strange quiet.