“This is yours,” I told her.

“All of it.

It is here for you, whenever you want it.

And nobody, ever, is going to take it away.” For weeks after that, she woke in the middle of the night, and padded downstairs, and opened the refrigerator, just to check that the tub was still there.

And each time it was.

That was the thing I found hardest to forgive, harder than the stolen money or the forged signatures or the plot against my house: that George had not only endangered our daughter, he had reached into her and turned something as fundamental as hunger, as the simple certainty that a child will be fed, into a permanent fear.

Money can be recovered.