I did not treat the offer as proof she had altered anything.

It showed what she wanted now: for the questions to end, with enough money offered to remove my immediate complaint.

That was enough reason not to accept it on those terms.

Back in the kitchen, Claire spread the receipts out.

Some early amounts I had seen were partial payments: three hundred dollars for an initial review, four hundred eighty for copies, an early storage charge of twenty-one hundred.

They were included in larger final categories, not extra sums to be counted twice.