Perhaps it was only greed, clumsy and abstract.

Perhaps it was nothing but a careless question from a careless young man.

I have chosen, for my own sake, not to build it into something I cannot prove.

But I will say this: a father should never have to hear that his son asked a lawyer, two weeks before his wedding, how his parents’ deaths would affect his inheritance.

Whatever Garnet meant by it, the coldness of the question told me how far the rot had gone — that somewhere in him, his mother and I had stopped being his parents and become, instead, an obstacle between him and a number.