The blue light cast a pale, cold glow across his tired face.

“It’s an alert from the joint account,” he said.

His voice was barely a whisper.

“The one you told me was closed three years ago, Mom.”

Juliette did not look at him.

She kept her eyes fixed on the scuffed baseboard near the umbrella stand.

“It was an oversight,” Juliette said.

“An oversight of ten thousand dollars,” Dan said.

He lowered the phone, his hand trembling slightly against his thigh.

Sarah let out a short, sharp laugh that sounded like a cough.

“She did the same thing to me when I bought my condo,” Sarah said.

“She said she was helping with the deposit, but she was just moving money around to hide it from the IRS.”

“Be quiet, Sarah,” Juliette snapped.

The heat in the hallway was suffocating.

The air smelled of stale bug spray, charcoal smoke from the grill outside, and the faint, sweet scent of Juliette’s expensive lavender perfume.

Through the screen door, the crickets in the tall grass of the pasture hummed in a steady, vibrating rhythm.