The letter told me the rest, in Mama’s own words, and Mrs.

Wooten let me sit and read it there in her office.

For the first eleven years, Mama wrote, she had taken money straight out of Delroy’s wallet while he slept — a twenty here, a twenty there, folded small and pressed down into her pantry containers where he would never think to look.

She had started calling it, in her own mind, stealing. Then she’d crossed the word out and written underneath it that yes, that was exactly what it was — she was stealing, but she was stealing from the man who had stolen far more from her daughter.

That crossed-out word undid me as much as anything in the letter.