I carried it over to the window, using the pale white streetlight to read the printed text.
The Red Balloon Toy Store, the top of the receipt read, with an address on Oak Lane.
Below the name was a single item: one handmade wooden dollhouse with painted blue shutters, totaling eighty-four dollars and ninety cents.
The transaction had been approved at two in the afternoon on Thursday, while Richard was supposed to be in a regional board meeting.
I stared at the numbers, my mind spinning through every family member, every neighbor, every client we had ever mentioned.
We did not know any young children.
Caroline’s children were in college, and our own son was nineteen, his empty room down the hall still smelling faintly of charcoal and pine.
I turned to look at Richard, his face half-hidden by the shadow of the headboard, his breathing steady and untroubled.
The receipt felt thin and crisp between my fingers, a tiny fragment of a life I could not see.
I walked over to my dresser, opened the top drawer, and lifted the velvet tray of my jewelry box.
I slid the toy store receipt under my jewelry box.
The office of the family attorney, Mr. Robert Vance, smelled of old leather and lemon wax. I sat in a green wingback chair that was too deep for me, holding my purse against my stomach like a shield. My sister Caroline had given me his business card at the supermarket, her car keys tapping against the shopping cart while she whispered his name.
“To give you an accurate assessment of your position, Mary, I need your joint bank statements,” Mr. Vance said. He sat behind a large mahogany desk, his gold-rimmed spectacles resting on a stack of clean white folders. “The last three years of tax returns would also help us establish a baseline.”
I rubbed my gold wedding band, sliding it up to my knuckle and back down. “Richard handles all of that. He keeps the tax folders in his study. I don’t have a key to the filing cabinet.”
