He had come, three days after his mother’s funeral, not to grieve, not to remember, not to sit for a moment in the room where she had spent her last years, but to inventory the assets.

That was all she had ever been to him, in the end.

A line on a balance sheet, now closed.

The director did not rise, and she did not raise her voice.

She folded her hands on the desk in front of her, and when she spoke, her tone had cooled into something calm and absolutely immovable.

“Your mother’s estate has been settled, Mr.

Vance,” she said.