I took out that little prepaid phone you all used to make fun of — the cheap one with the cracked screen — and I recorded them.”

I remembered the phone.

Her little flip phone, the one Richard mocked, always tucked into the bottom of her canvas tote bag.

“What did you record, Mom?”

And my mother looked at me with a sadness that put ten years on me in a single second.

“I recorded your husband,” she said, “telling that man that he had the insurance policies ready.