She believed him.

Of course she believed him. He told her not to worry about the money. He told her he had plenty. Why would a hundred-year-old man lie about something like that?

But it wasn’t true.

Walter’s pension was eleven hundred dollars a month.

That’s all. Eleven hundred dollars. His house was paid off, thank goodness. But he had property taxes. And utilities. And his blood pressure medication, and his heart medication, and his new inhaler after the pneumonia. And his Medicare supplement. And his electric bill, which was huge in the winter because the old furnace in that house was older than I am.

After all that, he had maybe two hundred dollars a month left over. Two hundred dollars for food, for everything.

Sarah’s family of four needed about six hundred dollars a month in groceries. At least.

He did the math. He knew it didn’t work.

He did it anyway.

He started with his savings. He had about four thousand dollars in a savings account. Money Ruth had put away over sixty years, a little at a time, for emergencies.

That lasted about five weeks.

Groceries every week. Then school supplies, when Hazel mentioned her class was starting a science project and she didn’t have poster board. Then a winter coat for the middle child, Ben, who’d outgrown his and was wearing one of Sarah’s old sweatshirts to school. Then vitamins, when Toby got sick and Sarah couldn’t afford the pediatrician’s suggested vitamins. Then toddler clothes, because Toby was growing so fast his pants were halfway up his shins.

Every week, more.

When the savings ran out, Walter started selling things.

His gold watch. The one from the steel plant. 41 Years of Faithful Service. He sold it to a pawn shop downtown for a hundred and eighty dollars.

His coin collection. A whole album of old silver dollars and buffalo nickels that he’d been collecting since he was a boy in Pennsylvania. Four hundred dollars.

His record collection. Glenn Miller. Tommy Dorsey. Ella Fitzgerald. Two hundred albums. He sold the whole thing to a man from a used record store for three hundred dollars. The man told him some of those albums were worth more than that on their own. Walter didn’t care. He needed the money that week.

Ruth’s sewing machine. An old black Singer from 1952. Ninety dollars.

His fishing rods. His tools from the steel plant. A set of china Ruth’s mother had given them for their wedding.

He sold almost everything in that house that anyone would buy.

By the end of March, there was nothing left to sell.

And the bags kept needing to be filled.

That’s when he started stealing.

I wasn’t there for any of that. I was in Florida. Sitting on Colleen’s lanai, drinking iced tea, watching the sunset over the Gulf.

And every Sunday, Walter called and said, “I’m fine, Margaret. Don’t worry about me. Enjoy the sunshine.”

I came home at the end of March.

The first thing I noticed was Walter’s house.

It looked empty. Not abandoned. Just empty. I could see through the front window that the big wooden record cabinet in his living room was gone. The cabinet that had been sitting in that exact spot since 1962.

I went over right away with a coffee cake.

“Walter? Where’s your record cabinet?”

He was sitting in his armchair. He’d lost weight. A lot of weight. His cheeks were sunken.

“Sold it,” he said. “Didn’t need it. I can’t hear the high notes anymore anyway.”

“You sold your records?”

“I’m a hundred years old, Margaret. What am I going to do with two hundred records?”

I looked around. The china cabinet was empty too. Ruth’s sewing machine was gone from the corner. The fishing rods were gone from their hooks by the back door.

“Walter,” I said slowly. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on,” he said. “I’m downsizing. That’s what old people do. You’ll understand when you’re my age.”

I didn’t believe him.

But I didn’t push.

I should have pushed.