It was not the theft that undid me, exactly, though it was theft; it was the timing of it, the specific arithmetic of what each dollar had been spent instead of.

This drink package instead of his pain medicine.

That spa afternoon instead of his groceries.

A night at the shipboard casino instead of the heat in the house where he lay shivering.

They had not simply spent money that was not theirs.

They had converted, line by line, the exact things that kept a dying man comfortable into the things that made a vacation luxurious — and they had done it while posting the photographs, so the whole world could admire the trade.

Chapter 4 — The Empty Cabinet