One of the Feds—he’d introduced himself earlier, Finkle, Fickle, Fickett, something like that—cleared his throat from behind my mother. “Ladies,” he said, “I’m sorry to trouble you. Can you point me to the bathroom my guys can use?”

“My husband, when he was drunk, sometimes relieved himself in the ficus by the piano,” Cricket said, waving her arm in that direction. “That should be fine for you and your henchmen.”

“The powder room is right under the stairs,” I said quickly. “Let us know if you need more toilet paper.”

“Obliged,” Ficus said.

“Uncle Danny will come.” I turned back to Cricket. “He’ll have some good advice.”

“Daisy,” she said. “I—”

She was interrupted by two men who came into the kitchen and asked me to please step aside as they unplugged Cricket’s answering machine from the wall with an efficiency that suggested they’d done this task many times before.

“I’m worried,” she continued, lower. “This house is still mortgaged, Daisy. Your father’s salary is gone. We’ve long since blown through his book income.”

“You’ve got money from his life insurance,” I said, bidding a silent goodbye to the ancient answering machine. Maybe now Cricket would move into the twenty-first century and give up her landline.

“There was none,” she said, stillness in her voice.

“What?” I smiled with the cheerful intensity of one clinging to their last threads of optimism. “That can’t be true,” I insisted, though her face conveyed that this was not a joke.

I started for my father’s study in the back of the house, but found it jammed with people. “Excuse me.” I tried to push through to his filing cabinet.

Cricket followed. “I met with our old financial adviser last month. I’ve always hated him, you know. He always showed up to meetings in a golf shirt and blazer, totally unprofessional. But he reminded me that Gregory’s life insurance policy had already been cashed out five years ago.”

“Why would he cash out his life insurance?” I said, giving up on my efforts and pivoting back to face her.

Cricket avoided my eyes. “He—we—were having some liquidity problems at the time.”

“At the time? Cricket, it sounds like you’re having liquidity problems now.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” She said this as though I hadn’t been listening, when in fact each word she’d said rang furiously in my ears.

“If things were this bad, why did you pay my rent for so long? I could’ve lived with you here.”

“You didn’t like it here. And anyway, I just wanted things to be as normal as possible for you and Wallis.”