The still room held on to the light, and nothing in the house needed fixing.

I reached under the smooth oak edge where the wood met the wall.

My fingers followed the shallow grooves I had carved into the timber with Harold’s old pocketknife the night before.

H.B. plus M.B. twenty-four.

The yellow paint on the drywall had dried all the way by dawn.

It was the very shade of sunshine we had put in our first kitchen in Tucson back in nineteen seventy-eight, warm and gentle, with no harshness to it in the morning light.

Arthur Vance had phoned at five the afternoon before to confirm the final filing.