We had started eight months earlier with six thousand two hundred dollars in our joint savings from our regular paychecks.

Now the handwritten column in my ledger showed twenty-one thousand four hundred and ten dollars, counted to the exact dollar.

“Judy called while you were out in the field,” I said, watching him scrub his black hands with Lava soap at the sink.

Nate stopped rubbing his palms together, his forearms covered in gray suds.

“What did she want?” he asked.

“She asked if we wanted Kim’s old living room rug,” I said.