The formal small claims summons lay open on the bedside table.

At seven in the morning on January eighteenth, I carried the stack of papers into my home office and cleared off the desk entirely.

Evan came in carrying two white ceramic mugs of black coffee.

He set one by my elbow and pulled a folding metal chair up to the side of the desk.

I arranged the paperwork into three separate vertical columns across the dark wood.

The left column held the notarized bank ledger sheets showing every automatic nine-hundred-forty-dollar mortgage transfer sent from my personal credit union account to my mother’s house account over twenty-four months, ending with the printout confirming the Christmas morning cancellation.