Because for months, everything had seemed fine.

For the past year, Alvin had been sending four thousand dollars a month to make certain his parents could live comfortably in their historic home in Savannah, the stately old brick house with its deep porch and its lush garden, full of the handmade furniture his father had built.

Manuel had been a custom woodworker his whole life; Carmen had sewn for the boutique shops downtown for forty years; that house was the sum of two lifetimes of careful, patient work.

Alvin had sent the money and assumed, the way busy successful children assume, that money was the same as safety, that his parents, well-funded, were therefore well.