That was three days after Caroline had signed a transfer of thirty-five hundred dollars from their joint savings account into his venture fund.

At nine o’clock that evening, Caroline sat on the sofa in the Elmwood living room folding warm laundry from the basket.

She smoothed a white cotton pillowcase against her knee before folding it into three precise sections.

Grant sat across the room at the dining table, marking up a set of site blueprints with a red pencil.

“I went down to the city records office on Washington Street today,” Caroline said.

Grant didn’t lift his pencil from the margin of the blueprint.