It took them about an hour to tell me, and they told it badly and out of order and interrupted each other constantly, and it came to this.

Everett had been at them for two years about the house. It was too big, the stairs were a problem, Walter’s hip. He would handle everything. He would put the money into an investment he had access to through work — better than any bank — and it would grow, and they would draw an income from it, and there’d be more for them at the end than the house was worth.

They signed the quitclaim in March because he brought it out and said it made the sale simpler.

The money went into the account he set up. They saw a statement once, in April, which he printed for them, and which showed a balance and a return of about nine percent.

“Did you keep it?” I asked.

Shirley got up and went into the other room and came back with a piece of paper, and I looked at it for about four seconds and understood that it had been made in a word processor.