I’m asking you to be smart about one month in May.”

The pot boiled over the moment he turned his back, and he cursed at the stove under his breath, and I grabbed the towel.

“Then that’s settled,” he said later, out in the hallway.

He switched off the bedside lamp at nine forty.

The room went dark except for the strip of hall light under the door, and I lay on my back with my eyes wide open.

At the bottom of tote fourteen, the thirty-first folder hadn’t been stamped, and Megan had known the count before I ever put a hand inside.