She reached out and covered my hand with hers.

“David made some very bad choices, Mom.”

“But he’s my son,” I said.

The silence returned to the kitchen, heavier this time.

I looked out the window at the grey afternoon sky.

The clouds were thick, promising rain before the evening was over.

I thought about the house Arthur had built for us, the years we had spent here, and the workshop in the backyard.

Arthur’s workshop was still exactly as he had left it.

Every chisel, every plane, every saw was hung in its proper place on the pegboard.

David had wanted to sell the tools to a liquidator in the city.

I had fought him on that, unable to bear the thought of Arthur’s life’s work being sold off for scrap.

Now I knew why David had been so desperate to get his hands on them.

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Rachel said.

“But you can’t let him ruin you to save himself.”

We sat in silence for a long time, the shadows stretching across the kitchen floor.