“Forty came from my grandmother,” Claire said.

“The other twenty, Jason always told me, came out of our savings.” Ruth’s head came up sharply.

Chapter 6 — Twenty Thousand Dollars

“That twenty thousand did not come from your savings,” Ruth said slowly. “It came from us. We gave it to him.”
George stopped turning pages and looked at his wife.

It came back to both of them as they said it. Two months after the wedding — after, not before — they had sold off a small parcel of land, and Jason had called and asked them for the money, because, he said, he and Claire had found the perfect house and needed help closing on it.

Ruth had wanted to just send it. But George was George. George had insisted on a signed, handwritten receipt, and had kept the bank transfer slip, the one with down payment written in the memo line in his own careful hand, filed away with his records the way he filed away everything.

Claire felt the last piece of a puzzle she’d been staring at for months drop into place.