Take this, she wrote.

Pay off your mother’s medical bills.

Buy her the care she deserves.

And then, at the very end, in letters that shook more than all the rest: Thank you for being the son I always wished I had.

Love, Nora.

I set the pages down in my lap and I could not see them anymore, and for a long time I simply sat in that office and let the letter do its work on me.

Because what she had written was not really about money at all, though there was money in it.