“She didn’t ask if I made it to Sacramento at all,” I said, setting the phone back down on the glass.

“She only asked about the electricity.”

I left the phone on the coffee table and took my laptop into the kitchen at nine o’clock.

The kitchen counter was clean and dry, lit by a single bulb above the sink.

I logged into my main banking portal and opened the personal credit history section.

Seven years ago, my father had insisted on adding his name as a co-signer on my first undergraduate student loan documents, claiming that his standing as a retired county inspector was needed to get lower interest rates.

I went to the legal document repository and opened the archived agreement file from four years earlier.