My fingers kept turning my silver wedding band around my thumb until the metal felt hot on my skin.

“He spent my whole life telling me the state was going to put me in foster care.”

Howard leaned forward and planted both elbows on the blotter.

He looked over the thin wire rims of his reading glasses straight into my eyes.

“Frank wasn’t pulling you out of a fire, Mara,” Howard said.

“He was the one who struck the match.”

He laid a second sheet on top of the canceled check.