Six months later, the divorce was final.

I kept the house.

I refinanced it into my own name, and Damon’s share was reduced, dollar for dollar, by the marital debts he had created in the dark — so that the very borrowing he’d done to enrich his brother became the thing that quietly pushed him out of the walls he’d tried to mortgage.

There is a justice to that arithmetic that I still find satisfying in a slow, private way.

My parents received their Christmas gift at last.