I didn’t sit so much as fold. The Virginia evening pushed a warm gold through my lace curtains; the little flag on my neighbor’s porch hung still as a held breath. In that soft American quiet, the words on my screen felt like a slammed door.

On the secretary by the window, James smiled out from a frame the color of old honey. “Don’t let yourself get hurt, Edith,” he would have said. It was our lifelong choreography: he drew boundaries; I paid bills.

I turned the key to the top drawer and took out the thick folder labeled GARRETT—a paper weight in every sense. Tuition. Mortgage. Insurance. Kitchen remodel. Private school. Favors stapled to favors, the ledger of a decade lived in receipts.

I used to call it generosity. Tonight, under kitchen light, it read like evidence.

The phone buzzed again. Rebecca—my granddaughter who still calls for no reason.