Seven Months of Rent Receipts Proved What My Son Had Taken From Me

My dark blue wool cardigan hung over the back of the wooden desk chair.

It was a soft merino knit with four heavy horn buttons down the front, bought at a department store downtown three years ago.

Mark had brought it to my old house for my seventieth birthday, back when he still came over on Sunday afternoons to eat stew and ask how my factory shift had gone.

It was the last real gift he had ever bought me before the corporate promotions started and his voice hardened.

I pulled the cardigan over my shoulders and fastened all four horn buttons from the bottom to the neck.