“I took out a second mortgage on our house last spring.”

The room went entirely silent.

Even the hum of the refrigerator seemed to die down.

I stared at my father, my breath catching in my throat.

“You did what?” I asked.

He didn’t look at me.

He kept his eyes on his wife.

“I thought her treatments were getting more expensive,” he said.

“You told me the insurance wouldn’t cover the new specialist in Chicago.”

He took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling heavily.

“Where did that money go, Martha?” he asked.

My mother swallowed hard.

She didn’t answer.

“Tell me,” he demanded.

“She wanted to go to Cabo,” my mother whispered.

The confession was so quiet I barely heard it over the sound of the wind outside.

“What?” my father asked.

“She said she needed to get away from the winter,” my mother said.

“She said the dampness in Ohio was making her joints ache.”

“So you sent her on a vacation?” my father asked.

“With my mortgage money?”

My mother didn’t deny it.

She just squeezed her eyes shut.