“It establishes the timing of these business events,” Gary said.

“It does not, by itself, tell us where he spent every minute or why he missed the service.”

The service had been at eleven.

His business crisis occupied that afternoon.

Both could be true without making attendance impossible.

The contradiction was not that a foreclosure filing physically prevented a birthday dinner.

It was that my parents had given me an account designed to avoid admitting what Arthur was handling, then used that account to excuse not coming at all.

The records also showed that the crisis had begun months earlier.