And Richard said, I am told, “She’s not well enough to come in.”

And Arthur said, “Then I will come to the house.”

My father took the passbook off the counter and left.

Before she handed it back, Beatrice Nkemelu stamped the last page in red, because a hold had been placed on the account and because marking the customer’s book is what the procedure says you do.

And three weeks and a day later my father threw that stamp onto his mother’s coffin in front of twenty-three people and told us all it was nothing.

Part Thirty-Eight: He Went to the House