“He took you three days after this order was signed, too.”

I looked at my mother’s signature on the bottom line, in dark blue ink that had stayed bold for thirty-four years.

“Why didn’t the county authorities go after him?” I asked.

“Gene filed a false report saying Claire died in a highway wreck near the state line,” Howard said.

By half past two we were sitting in a back booth at the Oak Creek Diner across from the courthouse.

The lunch crowd had gone, leaving the vinyl booths empty under the soft hum of the fluorescent lights.