Four hundred twelve dollars a day for Mark Vance.

Three thousand dollars owed to my father.

The small black speaker sat where it had sat since Monday.

I plugged it into the charger behind the bread box and pushed it back out of the way.

Arthur’s call at lunch came back to me, his slow, clipped way of saying that he and my mother, Ruth, would be here at a quarter to seven, and that he wanted a word upstairs first.

I got the vintage silver serving tray down from the top of the hutch, Julian’s grandmother’s, and rubbed it with the cloth until the tarnish came off onto the cotton.