Her wedding: twenty-five thousand dollars. Harry’s family could not cover their half, so I had covered it quietly and told myself I did not want anyone to be embarrassed.
The house: eighty thousand from my retirement savings for the down payment, because young couples needed help getting started and that was what fathers did, what Martha would have wanted.
Then the monthly maintenance of their lives. Twelve hundred for the mortgage. Three hundred for utilities. Five hundred for groceries in the tight months. Car insurance. Credit card balances. Emergency repairs.
My Social Security check, month after month, pouring into the household of a man who had just told me that service was the price of existing under the roof I owned.
I had been calling it love.
