That afternoon I stopped being patient and started being efficient.

I sent a tow truck for the car — the title was in my company’s name, and it left on a flatbed while Dashiell stood on the curb and watched the thing he used to prove he was somebody roll away down the street.

I cut off the phone line the company paid for.

I had the property manager served with an order that nothing bought with my money was to leave the old house.

And Sabelle, once she understood that Dashiell did not actually own a single thing — not the apartment, not the car, not the life he’d described to her — blocked his number and was gone by nightfall, which told me everything about what had been between them, which was nothing that money hadn’t been holding up.

By the fourth day of heat, I could hear them through the walls of that house, mother and son, screaming at each other about whose fault it all was.