That is a heavy thing to sit with.

Henry loved Michael; I never doubted that, and neither, I think, did Michael, whatever he told himself about being judged.

But Henry had also spent forty-six years married to a woman who studied patterns for a living, and some of that had rubbed off on him, and when he began to notice the shape of Michael’s questions, the way they circled always back to the trust and the house and my signature, he did not do what I did.

He did not explain it away.