Pastor Dale thanked me for paying the church roof from my account. My mother had stood before the congregation and accepted their gratitude as though the money had come from her. He had only discovered the truth the week before, when I sent him the receipt bearing my name. He did not embarrass my parents. He simply corrected the record in front of thirty-five people who had spent three years believing my father was a disabled man surviving on a settlement. In reality, he was perfectly capable of supporting himself—and had just told his daughter he wished she had never been born.

Then Aunt Winifred opened the envelope I had given her. She read three numbers aloud: the monthly transfers, the seventeen thousand dollars taken from the account my father opened for me when I was six, and the date of the final withdrawal. It was one month before Corinne made the down payment on her house. Suddenly, everyone in that yard could do the arithmetic. The house had been purchased with my childhood savings, moved through my parents, and the only question left was whether Corinne had known…