Beatrice, meanwhile, driven by a desperate curiosity, went searching through his office, and in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet, beneath old papers, she found a plain notebook filled with a handwritten ledger in my distinct hand — years of transfers to keep his business alive, medical bills paid for his family, mortgage payments settled month after month after month.

And tucked inside it, a letter Christopher had written me five years earlier: Loretta, I know you liquidated your savings to save my business today.

I do not deserve you.

But I swear that when I succeed, I will spend the rest of my life making this up to you. Beatrice held that paper with shaking hands and sank to the floor and wept — not, I think, for her son, and not even yet for me, but for her own foolish, ruinous arrogance, and for the kind daughter-in-law she had spent seven years despising.

Upstairs, Melanie was already packing.