The screen lit up: DAD.

Grandma reached over, without a word, and turned it face down.

I want to sit with the detail of the lovely garden for a moment, because it is the thing about the whole affair that I find hardest to forgive, harder even than the money.

The theft was greed, and greed is at least comprehensible.

But the lovely garden was something else.

My mother had looked my grandmother in the eye, over lunch, and lied to her gently, warmly, using the language of a pleasant outing, in order to walk her into a building and abandon her there.