We do not count your family the same.

He had said it plainly, the way you state a policy, a thing long since decided and merely now being communicated, and the terrible part was not that it surprised me.

The terrible part was that some quiet accountant in the back of my mind had suspected the figure for years and had only now been handed the statement that confirmed it.

There is a specific grief in having a thing you suspected said out loud, and it is not the grief of surprise.