I could see her doing it — writing stealing, then stopping, then refusing to let herself off the hook by dressing it in a kinder word.

My mother had gone to church every Sunday of her life.

She believed, plainly and without irony, in right and wrong, and taking another person’s money was wrong, and she knew it, and she did it anyway, for eleven years, and made herself write the true name for it even in a letter no one would read until she was dead.

She would not lie to me even about her own goodness.