I did it as a secured note anyway.

Not because I distrusted him.

I want to be completely honest: in 2017 I did not distrust him at all.

I did it because it was my parents’ house, and because my father had bought it in 1979 on a machinist’s wage, and because there is a rule I have never broken in twenty years, which is that money that came from somebody else’s whole life does not go anywhere on a handshake.

Christopher signed it in a UPS Store on Rosecrans on a Tuesday afternoon and made a joke and did not read it.