When I finally answered the phone that evening, Brynn was screaming about theft, and I told her calmly that her possessions were insured, inventoried, and waiting, and that she had thirty days. Then I hung up and did not answer again.

Grayson came back alone in March. He sat at the kitchen table and cried, and he did not ask for anything, which was new. They separated that summer. He rents a place in Muncie now and pays for it himself, and he comes on Sundays and fixes whatever I have written on the list on the refrigerator. We are slowly becoming people who tell each other the truth.

The photograph of Alistair holding the paid off notice above his head still hangs in the hallway. I dust the frame every week.

I spent two years mistaking silence for peace and calling it love. My name is on that deed because I e