The fourth name was Rodney Pruett.
Kyles brother. He lives in Pittsburgh. He has not set foot in my house since the funeral. He was listed on the energy assistance application as a member of my household, because the program pays more for a household of four, and Kyle had been told that more people meant more money.
Amy knew. That is why she put her napkin over her face. Kyle had told her he was just filling in the form, and she had let it go, the way she had let the furnace go, the way she had let the deed go.
The caseworker, a young woman named Tess, did not rush. She waited until Amy lowered the napkin. Then she asked her, very gently, whether she wanted to say anything, and Amy did.
She said, Mom, I knew. I am so sorry. She said it in front of twenty people, with the ham going cold and my brother staring at his plate and Kyles mother sitting very straight with her hands in her lap. She said she had been afraid of him for a year. She said she had gone along with everything because she was afraid of what would happen if she did not.
I got up from the table. I did not say anything. I went and held my daughter, and she shook against me like a leaf.
Kyles mother stood up. Her name is Carol. She said, Kyle, get your coat. He said, Mom, this is nothing. She said, Get your coat. She took her son by the sleeve and walked him out of my dining room, and I heard the black truck start in the driveway, and then I did not hear it anymore.
I was seventy-three years old and I washed at a sink with water I boiled in a pot, and the only thing that kept me warm was the idea that someone, someday, would read what was in the flour canister.
The county does not treat this lightly. The caseworker filed a referral with the Ohio County prosecutor and with Adult Protective Services, and both opened a file by New Years. Kyle repaid the eighteen hundred dollars and the refund, which he could do because of the truck. The truck was sold. The deed he had pressured me to sign was challenged in court as the product of undue influence, and a judge in Wheeling set it aside after hearing from a social worker who had visited my house. The house is mine again. Edgington Lane, 1968, paid off.
Kyle pleaded to a charge of making a false statement to a public agency. He received probation and a no-contact order that covers my house. He lives with his mother now. I am told he has a job at a hardware store and that his mother checks his pockets before he leaves in the morning.
The furnace has been on since the day after Christmas. A man from the gas company came out personally. He said he had never seen one off for that long, and he checked the whole system twice.
Amy is in her old room. She filed in January. She goes to a group on Thursday evenings and she tells me about it afterward, a little at a time. She does not ask me to let things go anymore. She says it is the one sentence she is retiring.
The flour canister is still on the counter. I use it for flour. But I kept the letter from the county in a drawer next to the Christmas cards, in case anyone ever needs reminding that the warmest place in a cold house is a woman who finally opens the mail.