It was easier, as my husband liked to say, this way.

Easier was the word that had run our whole arrangement.

It was always easier for me to pay than to argue, easier to smile than to count, easier to absorb one more charge than to be the person who made a scene over money at a family table.

Easier, it turned out, was just the bill for a harder thing, deferred.

But a thing that happens once is a kindness, and a thing that happens every single time is a system, and I was trained, of all people, to tell the difference.