Clay pulled the spare house keys out of his pocket and dropped them on the hood of her parked sedan.

“Don’t call me.

Don’t come near my son.”

“I’ll have my lawyer call your rig supervisor by five o’clock,” Jaclyn yelled, stepping toward him as he backed toward the door of his truck.

“I’ll tell the judge what really goes on in that house.”

Clay got into the cab without another word and backed out onto the street.

By four that afternoon, the light coming through the kitchen window had faded to a pale, dusty yellow.

A thick white document lay in the middle of my oak table next to a half-empty mug of black coffee and Clay’s regular two-week oil rig pay stub for thirty-eight hundred dollars.