I did not lose a wife that night.

I learned that I had never had one — that I had been married, the whole time, to a stranger who was very good at wearing the face of a wife, and that the stranger had finally, on a security recording, taken the face off.

There was nothing left to mourn but my own six years of not seeing.

And I would have those years back to spend on my mother, which was the best possible use of them, and the only amends I could make for having lost them in the first place.

Chapter 14 — With What Money

In the morning, Wendy came floating down the stairs in designer sunglasses, swinging a handbag, and announced brightly that she was going shopping downtown.