She thrust the paper at my chest before I could say a word. It was a letter, official-looking, the kind with a law firm’s name printed across the top. My stomach dropped, because I recognized it. It had arrived two weeks earlier, and I had set it aside meaning to deal with it after the quarter closed at work, back when I still had a job. “This came to my parents’ house forwarded from here,” Camille snapped. “An inheritance, Marcus. Your uncle left you an inheritance, and you never said one word.”

I stared at the letter in my hand. My uncle Harold had passed away a month before, and I had assumed, like everyone in the family, that his modest estate would be split among his own children. I had never opened the follow-up letter. I unfolded it now, standing in my own doorway with my wife glaring at me, and read the number the attorney had listed. My knees nearly gave out. Then I understood exactly why Camille was standing on my porch three days after telling me I was a problem she hadn’t signed up for.