I slid the chain off the door, and the cold rushed in with him. Kevin’s face was red from the wind, and his eyes were glassy, as if he had not slept at all. “Mom, please read this,” he said, his voice cracking. On the screen was a post from the Maplewood Community Resource Center, with Gerald’s smiling photograph and my name beneath it. Below the photograph, in bold letters, sat the amount: twenty-seven thousand dollars.

“Tiffany saw it at midnight,” Kevin whispered. “She hasn’t stopped crying since.” I braced myself for the anger I expected. Instead, he scrolled to a message sent at 5:52 that morning and held it up again. “Her mother wrote this. Mom, there is something about her difficult year that nobody ever told you, and it has to do with Dad.”