“Nothing, Mom,” she said quickly.

“I’m just glad Aunt Shirley’s around so much, that’s all.”

I brushed the odd little moment aside and thought no more of it.

I know now what that quiet in my daughter was.

Nancy was the fiercest of my three, the one who trusted least easily, and some instinct in her had already caught the scent of something wrong — had heard “Shirley” and “bank statements” in the same breath and felt the hairs rise on her neck, even if she could not yet have said why.

She did not have the words for it, and she did not want to frighten her grieving mother with a suspicion she could not prove.