In the years after her funeral, memories like that had felt comforting and unbearable at the same time.

That afternoon, even the familiar roads seemed to be withholding something.

My wife Eleanor had kept all our bank records in blue binders.

After she died, I never reorganized them.

I simply added another binder each year and left her handwriting on the labels.

I took seven folders out of the filing cabinet that night and placed them in a row across the kitchen table.

January: forty thousand dollars.