The payee line was the part that had been torn away.

I turned the pieces in the light from the window.

On the back, in pencil, in my son’s handwriting: 3/28 they moved it.

For two years I had sat at that table and listened to Richard explain that Ethan was drifting, that Ethan wasn’t applying himself, that nineteen was the age a boy either got serious or got comfortable, and I had nodded.

I nodded because the accounts went to Richard and not to me.