I adjusted my wedding ring again, working out the figures in my head.

“That accelerates his entire commercial debt,” I said.

“Within forty-eight hours,” Brenda said.

“We have full legal cause to terminate their vendor accounts before sunrise tomorrow.”

I looked at the far corner of my study desk.

Evelyn had left her leather-bound journal next to my brass lamp.

She always wrote in it when her anxiety kept her awake, filling pages with quiet hopes for Brandon.

“The initial one-hundred-eighty-thousand-dollar venue cost was just a wedge,” I said.