There were no forty-five-thousand-dollar balances waiting for a signature, and no loan officers phoning from downtown before eight in the morning.

At four o’clock Grace put her empty jar on the porch table, gave my shoulder a quick squeeze, and walked back across the grass to her own side door.

I went down the porch steps with the stiff garden broom I kept in the side nook.

Yellow maple leaves lay thick along the paved driveway where Frank’s black truck had been parked three weeks earlier.

I swept in long, steady strokes, pushing the dry leaves into a neat pile at the edge of the lawn.