“Good.” He set the mug down with a click.

“A person can never be too careful with forty-two thousand dollars in savings and a lifetime of jewelry sitting in one place.”

He knew the amount because I had told him months earlier.

I had been foolishly pleased to have something left after years of keeping everyone else afloat.

My pension paid my ordinary expenses.

That money was for the extraordinary ones: a new roof assessment, a hospital bill, the kind of winter when everything broke at once.

The safe also held my mother’s jewelry and the papers for the third-floor apartment on Elm Street that I owned outright.

It wasn’t much by other people’s standards.

It was enough to let me sleep.

Greg picked up his wool jacket.

“I have to get to the shop before the morning delivery arrives.”

He was already in the hall when I said, “Would you like to have dinner later?”

“I’ll call you.”

Then the latch clicked shut.