She looked at me the way she had looked at me at the front door two weeks ago, chin up, eyes level, like a teacher waiting out a bad answer.

“I have your father’s clothes hanging in that closet,” she said.

“I have my mother’s china in the hutch.

That is twenty years of a life, Mason Prescott.”

“Whose name is on the deed?”

Her fingers found the silver chain and turned the clasp around and around.

“That is not the point.”

“It’s the only point there is.”