It was the first time I had heard my son draw a line with his wife and not immediately sand it down.
I took the seam ripper from my drawer.
The tool was old, silver, and narrow, and I had used it for decades to undo mistakes one thread at a time.
I slid the point beneath the first stitch.
The pocket opened cleanly.
The envelopes were still there.
For one terrible second, I cried from relief because the insult had not touched the thing itself.
It had touched me.
It had touched Frank.
But it had not taken what he saved.
I told Kyle to come over if he wanted to know the rest.
He arrived twenty minutes later with his hair uncombed and his face wrecked.
He stepped into my kitchen like a man entering a church after breaking a window.
Madison was not with him.
I was glad.
