I did not foreclose. I want that said plainly, because everyone assumes I did. I let the notice stand for nine days and then I withdrew it, and the reason was a fourteen-year-old boy.

Elliott called me on the fourth day from a school office phone because his parents had taken his. He did not ask me to come back or to pay anything. He asked whether I was warm. That was the whole question. It was the first time in five years anyone in that house had asked me something that was not a request.

So I converted the lien into a proper repayment schedule, drafted by my attorney, with a term and a rate and a signature line for each of them. Maurice signed it in a lawyer’s office with his hands shaking. Priscilla signed it without looking at me.

Then I moved out permanently. A one-bedroom apartment on Calloway Street, eleven minutes from Elliott’s school, with a window that catches the afternoon light and a kitchen where nobody irons anything but their own shirts.