It puts a permanent question under every kindness.

Was that hug for me, or for what I might leave you?

Did you call because you missed me, or because you needed something?

He had spent his whole marriage inside that question, unable to answer it, and the awful genius of pretending to be broke was that it gave him, at last, an answer, clean and plain, though the answer broke his heart.

What I understood, sitting on the edge of his bed with three million dollars open in a briefcase between us, was that he was not showing me the money to make me an heir.