Your dad had been gone eight years, and the house sounded too quiet at night.

Wendell made breakfast.

He fixed the gate.

He remembered birthdays.”

I knew the first half of that story.

She’d called me every Sunday, smiling about a charming man she met at a community fundraiser.

What I hadn’t known was how quickly that charm had become an inventory of things she did wrong.

“He said I had been careless with money after your father died.