And my father said: “No.

I haven’t anything to give you.”

I have thought about those seven words for nineteen years and for about eighteen of them I thought they were cowardice.

They were not.

They were accurate.

Thaddeus Thorne has not had an account in his own name since 1979.

He has a pension that goes into a joint account he cannot see the statements for because the statements go to her desk, and he has about forty dollars of cash in a tin in his study that he keeps for the man who does the gutters.

He was not refusing me.