“I’m not deciding what forty years meant in one afternoon.

But I won’t keep living as though I need your permission to know about my own money.”

“I’ve looked after things.”

“I know that’s what you call it.”

He folded another shirt and put it down again.

There were good years behind us.

There had been ordinary kindnesses, illnesses we had weathered together, jokes nobody else understood.

Remembering them did not alter the authorization on the table at the bank.