My mother-in-law turned up on my porch with three suitcases and called the police when I wouldn't let her in. Then the officer asked my husband one straightforward question about who owned the house — and the silence that followed was the ugliest thing I have ever stood through.

She did not believe me for about forty minutes.

Then she stopped arguing and went quiet and asked me to leave the folder, and I did.

That was the worst hour of that entire year and it was harder than the path and harder than the kitchen at two in the morning, because I have never in my life had to do that to anybody.

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PART 5 — SHE HAS NOT SPOKEN TO ME SINCE

Norma Delaine instructed a solicitor in the January.

She did it herself. I did not suggest it and I did not help and I was not a party to any of it.

There was a repayment order in the summer. Ardan is paying her back at four hundred and eleven dollars a month and will be until he is fifty-one.

She has not spoken to me since that Sunday.

Not one word in fourteen months. No card, no call, nothing.