It is how a real partnership works: two people each giving more than they take, trusting that over a lifetime it evens out, refusing to keep the small mean books because the trust is worth more than the accuracy.

I had believed in that, wholly, and I had lived it.

What I had not seen was that Brandon had been counting the entire time.

While I refused to keep books because keeping books felt unloving, he had been keeping meticulous ones — knew what I earned, what I had given his family, what my mother had gotten for my father’s land, which accounts he could drain and how slowly to do it so I wouldn’t notice.

My refusal to count had not been mutual generosity.