The grocery money, the electric bill, the cushion between my sister and the dark, that he had made me hand over the night before with such casual indifference.

“Here’s your money back, Evelyn,” he said, and his voice was low and genuinely remorseful, none of the flat contempt left in it at all.

“And I’m sorry.

I mean that.

I shouldn’t have made you pay for that table last night.

I shouldn’t have.

I don’t know what I was thinking.

I’m sorry.”