When she took sick, she had not handed me the ledgers as a gift.

She had been very clear about that, even then, even weak as she was.

“This is not a present, Lydia,” she had said.

“It is a responsibility.

There are people whose livelihoods run through these pages, and now they run through you.

I had not understood, when she said it, how completely she meant it, or how heavy a sentence it was to be handed.

I had thought she was being grand, the way the dying are sometimes grand.