“I handed you sixty thousand dollars in cash because you told me your wife had signed.

If she didn’t sign, we have a serious problem, and it isn’t a formality.”

My mother did not cry.

That was the thing that frightened me, standing in that kitchen — she did not cry, and she did not raise her voice, and a stillness came over her that was far more terrible than any amount of shouting would have been.

“How much money did you take?” she asked.

“Teresa—”