She looked past my shoulder at the old Buick sitting on the gravel drive, checking whether anybody was waiting in the passenger seat.

“I told your fiancée I’d stay out of the city,” Megan said quietly.

“I told her I wouldn’t call your office.”

“She’s not my fiancée,” I said.

“And she’s never coming near you again.”

I stepped up onto the top porch board and laid two things on the wooden railing between us.

The first was the wrinkled twenty-dollar bill, still dusted with faint red clay.

The second was the thick parchment stack of annulled divorce papers, signed by the circuit judge downtown less than two hours before.