When he went to the bank, the teller handed him a note that ruined his life…

Hale,” the manager said, looking at the withdrawal slip. His brow furrowed.

“This is… a significant transaction. You are liquidating the investment portfolio and transferring the entire cash balance?”

“That is correct,” I said.

My voice was steady.

Steadier than my hands, which I kept folded in my lap. “This will leave the associated checking accounts—the ones linked to the debit cards—with a zero balance,” he warned. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

I thought of the lake.

I thought of the murky water entering my lungs.

I thought of the laughter. “I am sure,” I said.

“It is a transfer. To an account solely in my maiden name.

Margaret Collins.”

“Very well.”

It took forty-five minutes.

Forty-five minutes to dismantle the financial safety net that had held my ungrateful son aloft for two decades. When I walked out of the bank, holding the cashier’s check and the confirmation of the wire transfer, I felt lightheaded. It wasn’t guilt.

It was the sudden, vertiginous absence of weight.

I drove to O’Hare. I left my car, a Lexus sedan that Richard loved to borrow, in the long-term parking lot.

I left the keys on the dashboard. I locked the doors.

I threw my SIM card into a trash can outside Terminal 3.

I boarded a plane to San Francisco. I didn’t look back. I rented a small cottage in Mendocino, hours north of the city.

It was nothing like the sprawling suburban fortress in Illinois.

It was small, smelling of cedar wood and salt spray. It perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

The ocean was different from the lake. The lake was stagnant, deceptive, hiding rot beneath a placid surface.

The ocean was honest.