Why did I keep it?

For five years, while I lived in that apartment and paid those bills and called those people my family, I quietly saved every receipt, scanned every document, kept the deed and the payment records organized in a folder labeled with a lawyer’s precision.

And on the surface, at the time, I told myself I did it out of ordinary prudence, the way anyone keeps their important papers.

But that was not the whole truth, and I know it now.