“The money’s in your name now, sweetheart.

Names get checked.”

She smiled at me with real warmth, and she never once took her eyes off the key ring on the table.

“Don’t leave your keys by the door,” she said.

“Anybody could pick them up.”

Then she was down the walk and into her car, and I threw the deadbolt behind her.

My purse was on the entry table where I’d left it, and yet it wasn’t.

There’s a pale ring in that wood where a lamp stood for twenty years, and the purse had been sitting inside that ring.