“Who’s there?” the voice called, and it was my daughter’s voice, thinner and more frightened than I remembered. I came out of that room at the top of the stairs, and there she stood at the bottom, keys still in her hand, her coat still on. Nora Beth. Twelve years older, twelve years thinner, twelve years further away than any ocean could explain. For a long moment neither of us moved. Then she saw my face, and instead of joy, what filled her eyes was pure terror.

“Mom,” she whispered. “What are you doing here? How did you, you have to go. You have to go right now.” She rushed up the stairs, but not to embrace me. She was trying to pull the door of that final room shut behind me, to hide the boxes of cash I had already seen. “Nora,” I said, my voice shaking. “Where is your husband? Whose money is this? What is going on in this house?” She looked at me, and something inside her seemed to break all at once. She sank down onto the top step, put her face in her hands, and began to cry the way she used to cry as a little girl, and through the sobs she said the words I had been afraid of for twelve years. “There is no husband, Mom. There hasn’t been for a very long time. And that money isn’t what you think it is.”