On Father’s Day my millionaire son walked into my freezing apartment, saw the tinned soup on the table, and asked how I was managing on the eight thousand a month his wife sends me. I told him nobody sends me anything.

By the end, our savings had been reduced to almost nothing.

I had always thought we were careful with money.

We were.

We simply discovered that careful and enough are two different words.

After she died, I sold the house we’d lived in since 1991.

It took four months.

I accepted the second offer.

Not because it was particularly good.

Because I could not face a third set of strangers walking through her kitchen saying things like, “The cupboards are a little dated.”

I hated them for saying that.

Not because they were wrong.

Because they were standing in her kitchen while she wasn’t.

I remember one couple opening the pantry door.

The woman looked inside and said, “There’s actually quite a lot of storage.”

I almost laughed.

Marianne had always complained that there wasn’t enough.

She used to say she could organize a warehouse and still not have enough shelves in that kitchen.

I signed the papers three days later.

I paid what was owed.

I settled what remained of the medical bills, which took until November.

Then I looked at what was left.

There wasn’t much.

And I gave most of it to my son.

Emmett.

He was twenty-six when his mother died.