For a fraction of a second an expression crossed it that I could not name — there and gone — and then it vanished beneath the same sympathetic smile she had worn all morning.

I did not understand what I had seen.

I only knew that it did not belong on the face of a woman who had just watched her brother disinherit his widow of sixty-nine years, and that the wrongness of it lodged in me like a splinter.

Chapter 11 — What Did You Do

“Mom.” Nancy’s voice cut through the heavy air like a knife.

I turned to my daughter.