The balance was two hundred and eighteen thousand dollars. The account had been receiving a monthly deposit since the week our divorce was finalised, every month, without fail, seventy-two of them. The envelope held six years of statements and one letter in Ambrose’s handwriting, lodged with the branch under instruction to be released only when I came in person.

He had been ill when he left. He had known for four months by the day at the courthouse and had told nobody, including our children. The letter said he could not bear to make me a nurse for the second half of my life after I had spent the first half raising his family, and that he had chosen to be remembered as a man who walked away rather than one I had to watch disappear. He wrote that he had put in everything he earned and everything he sold, and that he had said four thousand because he knew I would refuse a number that sounded like an apology.

He died in the spring of the second year. Our daughter told me at the time. I did not go to the service.