He got the house finished.

He did not get the future.

And my parents looked at the finished house and saw square footage.

And now he was four months in the ground, and my parents had looked at the house his body had paid for and decided it was more or less abandoned property, a windfall, a thing to be handed to the son-in-law they actually liked.

It did not seem to occur to any of them to wonder whose name was on the deed.

It did not occur to them to wonder much of anything about me.