“Open a new checking account at a completely different bank today, Nora,” Sarah said as she picked up her phone.

“Don’t let another check from your bookkeeping clients touch your old joint account.”

I left the courthouse office building and drove four miles out to my father’s farm on Route 9.

By noon the sun was high over the sweet corn rows, heating the tin roof of my father’s equipment shed until the rafters creaked in the summer warmth.

Inside the shaded bay, my father, Carl, stood beside his old green pickup truck, a grease-stained rag tucked into his belt loop.

He held a spiral-bound truck maintenance log open against the rusted driver-side fender, carefully writing down oil filter numbers with a stubby carpenter’s pencil.