And then, when I raised an eyebrow, because I had learned not to simply believe the easy version, he said it fuller.

I told him Sarah isn’t paying a dime.

I told him she spent two years being generous to a family that treated her like a bank machine, and that if anyone in this family owes an apology it’s the people who ordered two thousand dollars of food they couldn’t afford, not the woman who finally stopped covering for them.

I asked how his father had taken that, and Derek laughed, a short, bitter, unfamiliar laugh.

He hung up on me, he said.