They were the preliminary sale documents for Hawthorne Hall, the very building we were standing in.

My son and his wife had not simply come to my wedding gift of an evening to mock his mother.

They had, some nights before, let themselves into my private study and photographed my estate, page by page, the way you’d survey a property you intended to buy.

Or inherit.

They had been measuring what would one day be theirs — and, I was beginning to suspect, trying to work out how soon.

I sat with that footage for a long time before I went back inside, longer than the situation strictly required, because watching it demanded that I grieve something in real time.