“Look at the loop on the K, Nicholas.”
“I stood at your desk for two years begging you to close it.”
The silence was total.
Then, for the first time that I could remember, he looked small.
“I can fix this,” he said.
“Anna, I swear to you, I can fix it. I just needed a little more time.”
“A little more time to do what?”
“To win it back.”
His phone buzzed on the counter again.
This time I saw the banner on the screen before he snatched it up.
It was bright green and it carried the name of an online sportsbook.
My grandmother’s house.
My grandmother’s savings.
Eleven signatures that weren’t mine.
Football on a Sunday.
I understood all of it at once, the way you understand a monitor alarm before you read the numbers.
Elaine said nothing.
She watched her son the way I imagine she once watched a child who had copied his neighbor’s answers.
When he moved, it was sudden.
He lunged for the shoebox, one hand out, reaching across the table.
Elaine’s palm came down flat on the lid.
“You may take it, Nicholas,” she said.
“Judith Abbott has copies of every letter in this box.”
“She has been mailing them to your wife for fourteen months.”
Nick’s hand froze an inch above the lid.
“And Tara,” Elaine added quietly, “is sitting in my car in your driveway.”
“She would like to tell your wife the rest herself.”
I looked at the window.
In the gray morning light, the passenger seat of Elaine’s car was occupied.
A thin figure sat very still with both hands over her stomach, her forehead against the glass.
Then Elaine said the sentence I would hear in my sleep for weeks.
“Show your work, Nicholas.”
