He found out about it three years later, by accident, from Gemma.

Here is what Chadworth Prescott knew about his housekeeper before that Tuesday in March: that she was reliable, that she was quiet, that the girls liked her, and that she had never asked him for anything in five years except an afternoon off in June, once, which she had requested in writing.

Here is what he did not know: that she sent seventy percent of her salary to a younger brother finishing an engineering degree in another state.

That she had turned down two other positions at higher pay in the last eighteen months.