My mother stayed in the passenger seat, her head turned away toward the side window.

“A public court date on December fourteenth will put every bit of this business in the local paper,” he said.

He climbed back into the driver’s seat and pulled the door shut hard.

The white envelope flapped once under the truck’s wiper blade in the damp salt breeze off the river.

I didn’t walk down to the driveway to pick it up.

My father wasn’t trying to win this case in a quiet room with bank ledgers and wire transfer receipts.