Greenfield Memorial smelled the way my mother always did.
Soap and cold coffee and tired.
She was at the nurses’ station on the third floor, a clipboard in one hand, her reading glasses pushed up into her hair.
She saw my dress and my wet face and the folder, and the clipboard slid to the counter.
“Laney? What happened? Did somebody—”
“Mom. Read this.”
I put the first page in her hands.
She read it standing there.
I watched her eyes go left to right, then stop.
She read the date.
She read it again.
“This is dated November,” she said slowly. “Laney, Cooper was gone in August.”
“I know.”
“He never—” Her voice cracked. “Griffin sat with me for three days after the fun*ral. He told me there was nothing left. He said your father’s money all went to debts.”
“I know, Mom.”
“I believed him. I believed him for seventeen years.”
