“And I thought, well, I don’t need her money.”
“But I don’t know how to prove a thing like that to a man who’s already decided.”
“So I figured I’d build something instead.”
“A man can lie with his mouth. He can’t lie with a ramp.”
I looked at the envelope again.
“When did Kyle send this back?”
“October. The week after I fixed your porch light.”
“He drove out here. He didn’t come in.”
“He put it in the mailbox and sat in his truck for a while and left.”
October.
The same week Kyle had started coming to Sunday dinners.
The same week he’d first said the word “insurance.”
I thought about the number I’d seen on his phone.
Lower than I’d thought.
I thought about how I’d told myself I’d misread it.
“Gene,” I said. “You ran a company for thirty years.”
“I did.”
“You read bank statements.”
