Chapter 8 — What She Said

I found Terry that evening on the back step, in the cold, the way our father used to sit when he needed to not be inside.

I sat down next to him, close enough that our shoulders almost touched, and I told him.

Finally.

All of it.

“Three months after Dad died,” I said, “I came over to help Mom with the taxes.

And she was in a state — you remember how she was that year — and we got into it about something, the insurance I think, and she stood in the kitchen and she told me it should have been me.” Terry went still.