“Can you have them on my desk before two o’clock?”

“The blue binder is at my mother’s house,” I said.

I drove straight across town to Evelyn’s small white house on Maple Street and parked along the curb behind her garden shed.

The afternoon sun came through the sheer curtains in my mother’s kitchen, lighting up two potted orchids on the painted windowsill.

Evelyn set a warm mug of black coffee in front of me and put a plate of butter cookies on the yellow Formica table.

She pulled her chair close to mine and gently rubbed my shoulder as I unzipped my blue vinyl binder.