She had sat at my father’s kitchen table, seven months earlier, and told me that a wife signs what she is given and never asks what it is.

She had told me that as advice.

As the accumulated wisdom of a life.

As the thing she had done, successfully, with Gerald, for forty-two years.

And the reason her house is gone is that she did exactly that, one more time, at seventy-one, in a conference room, in eleven minutes.

And the reason my house is not gone is that I said no.

Four times, over three years, for no articulable reason, to a man who never once raised his voice about it.