I had bought the house five years ago, shortly after their mother had left me. As part of the divorce settlement, she bought out my interest in the family home, and I used the money to make downpayments on the country house and a tiny apartment in town. My children, who were then in college, had no interest in going to the house, and preferred to fritter away their free time seeing friends or traveling, likely courting all sorts of trouble and illegality whose worst outcomes they were fortunate to evade. They rebuffed my invitations to spend even a weekend at the house, though they claimed I hadn’t tried hard enough to accommodate their schedules.
The Keys
