Tucked beneath it was a handwritten note, the ink smudged by what looked like dried tears.

Claire, my sweet girl. I’m so sorry for raising a monster. I knew what he was doing and I was too weak to stop him. He bought this policy praying my strokes would take me sooner. But the money in the passbook is mine, and now it’s yours. Don’t weep for me. Use it to destroy him.

I flipped backward through the yellowed ledger, and my grief hardened into something clear and cold.

The old entries were wrong. Exactly twenty years ago — the year Mark and I married — there were rigid monthly withdrawals of ten thousand dollars.

Then, a little later, huge erratic sums began flooding in. Fifty thousand. A hundred thousand.

I squinted at the faded ink naming their source, and the room tilted.