He had been telling the truth as he understood it, in a room where the only other person who knew was not going to contradict him.

Part Fifteen: What It Bought

I want to record what that house actually was, because the number makes it sound like an asset and it was not an asset.

It was a three-storey rowhouse in Dorchester with a small iron balcony that my mother grew hydrangeas on, in pots, because there was no ground.

My father bought it in 1979 for thirty-one thousand dollars, which people do not believe, and it was the only thing either of them ever owned.

My mother died in 2004 and my father in 2006, fourteen months apart, and the house came to me because there was nobody else.