“Take it back,” she said.

I told her I would have a new one cut Monday and it would be hers.

“Ask me next month,” she said.

“I mean it.

Ask me next month.”

The porch light came on the way new fixtures do, all at once and too bright, and a man I didn’t know walked a brown dog past the end of the driveway and lifted one hand to us.

The county would call me Monday about a statement on the forged lease, Behrens had said.