“Wait out on the porch a minute, Chloe,” Patrick said.

“I have to take this call from the Vanguard auditors privately.”

He walked down the side steps onto the lawn with his phone pressed against his ear, leaving Chloe on the porch with me.

Chloe put her leather folder on the wicker table, but the brass clasp sprang open and three stapled documents slipped onto the wooden floorboards.

I stepped outside and grabbed the top sheet before she could bend down.

It was a draft quiet-title transfer for our marital home, naming Chloe Vance as the sole officer of record and dated three weeks earlier.