I am going to Mom and Dad’s, I said.

Ask, he said.

Ask what.

Where it goes.

I nodded.

But my hand was already around the strap of my purse, and some old reflex in me was already arranging my face into the expression I wore when I went to my parents’ house, the pleasant, undemanding, grateful expression of the daughter who sends the money and does not ask what it is for, and I understood, pulling the door shut behind me, that the hardest part of the whole thing was not going to be my father’s answers.

It was going to be getting myself to ask the question at all.