“Best of luck today, Mrs.

Briggs.”

“Thanks so much, Jose,” I said.

I tucked the printed slip into the side pocket of my wallet right next to my checkbook and walked back out into the heat.

Before I turned the key in the ignition, I thought about the carved mesquite porch sign I had come across on the garage shelf earlier that morning.

Harold had carved our names into that dense Arizona wood thirty years before, and now it sat crammed behind piles of green plastic lawn chairs in the dark.

I drove back to the house and parked the Buick on the gravel patch next to the garage.