The reason I laughed was the title. That house had not belonged to me, and it had not belonged to my mother at the end either. Eighteen months before she died, on her lawyer’s advice and mine, we had transferred it into a conservation trust tied to the historical society, because it sat on the last undeveloped parcel of the original town plat and my mother wanted it preserved rather than fought over. She kept a life estate. She lived there until she died, and then the trust took full possession. Desmond had bulldozed a protected historic structure that his wife did not own, that his inheritance did not touch, and that belonged, in law, to a public trust with lawyers of its own.

He had also destroyed it while I was standing in warm water two hundred miles away with our children, which meant I could prove I authorized nothing. The demolition permit was forged. The contractor had been told the homeowner was on site consenting, and the homeowner on the paperwork was a dead woman.