“You were right to refuse those papers,” she said, sitting down.

“It’s worse than Christopher admitted.

And it’s more deceptive.”

Christopher, she explained, had been quietly drowning for nearly a year.

A string of high-risk commercial real estate bets, made without my knowledge, had failed completely, and instead of telling me, he had taken high-interest loans to hide the losses and keep up the appearance of success.

By the time I went in for surgery, his creditors were threatening to move.