My son di3d, and my daughter-in-law kept the four-million-dollar house before telling me, "Go d!e in the mountains, useless old woman." But the night a floorboard suddenly gave way beneath me, I discovered something my son had hidden there.

I didn't move for a full three seconds.

Then I crossed the room and opened the door.

He was older than I expected — mid-sixties, silver-haired, wearing a coat that was too light for the mountain cold.

He was holding a briefcase in one hand and a thermos in the other.

He looked at me the way people look at someone they've been worried about for a long time.

"He told me you'd be standing exactly like that," Gerald Fitch said.

"Arms crossed.

Not sure whether to trust me."

"He told you a lot of things, apparently."

"He did." He held up the thermos.

"He also told me you take your coffee black.

May I come in?"

I stepped back from the door.

He set his briefcase on the floor and looked around the cabin without comment — the cracked windows, the broken chair, the altar with Thaddeus's photograph on top.

He poured coffee into the thermos cap and set it on the floor beside me without asking whether I wanted it.

"How long have you known my son?" I asked.

"Four years.

He came to me after he found the first transfer.

He didn't want to believe it at first.

Most people don't."

"What did he find?"

Gerald opened his briefcase and laid a folder on the floor between us.

"Vivienne had been moving funds from a joint investment account into a private account registered under her maiden name.

The first transfer was small — forty thousand dollars.

She told Thaddeus it was a gift to her sister.

He believed her." He paused.

"The transfers didn't stay small."

I picked up the folder.

The numbers were printed in neat columns.

Dates on the left.

Amounts on the right.

I read down the page slowly, and the further I read, the more the cabin seemed to tilt around me.

"Three point two million dollars," I said.

"Over thirty-one months, yes."

"She took three point two million dollars."

"She moved it," Gerald said carefully.

"Technically, the account was joint.

Her attorneys will argue she had the right.

That's why Thaddeus spent the last year building a paper trail that proves otherwise." He tapped the folder.

"He was meticulous, Mrs.

Honora.

Every transfer logged.

Every communication saved.

He even recorded two phone conversations — with her permission, in a state where one-party consent is sufficient."

I set the folder down.

"He recorded her."

"She told him, on two separate occasions, that the money was hers to do with as she pleased because — and I'm quoting directly — 'You won't be around long enough to miss it.'"

The cabin went very quiet.

"He was sick," I said.

Not a question.

"He was diagnosed fourteen months ago.

He didn't tell you because Vivienne asked him not to.

She said it would upset you unnecessarily." Gerald's voice stayed even, but something moved behind his eyes.

"He agreed because he was trying to protect you.

He thought if you didn't know, you wouldn't grieve as long."

I stood up and walked to the window.

The pine trees outside were perfectly still.

"She knew he was dying," I said.

"And she spent fourteen months moving his money before he was gone."