My parents’ help with that down payment was not a transaction.

It was a blessing, in the old sense — a way of saying, with money because the words were hard, that they believed in the life I was building.

Every board of that house had a piece of their faith in it.

And Damon had signed papers in some office, without telling me, that quietly pledged their faith as security for his brother’s fraud.

That was the thing I could not forgive, in the end, more than the kickbacks or the lies or even the cruelty about the Christmas gifts.