“These county offices take time, Mom.

I told you that.”

He walked out to the garage without writing down a single word or giving me a slip of paper to show for the twelve hundred dollars.

I stood by the kitchen island and pulled my worn leather checkbook register out of my sweater pocket.

My fingers were stiff from the damp autumn cold outside.

With a blue ballpoint pen, I wrote twelve hundred dollars on the bottom line.

It was the seventh line in a row marked with the word cash in small, neat letters.

Seven straight months of cash payments, and not one scrap of paper to prove I had given him a single cent.

By one o’clock, the rain had started tapping against the long glass windows in the living room hallway.

I took a soft yellow dust cloth and began wiping down the dark wood of the banister, starting at the bottom stair where the light was thin.

Upstairs, Sloan was talking on her cell phone with the speaker turned up high.

Her voice came down the stairwell like thin glass breaking on tile.

“The white leather interior is fine, but I want the chrome package delivered before Thanksgiving,” Sloan said.

“My husband will wire the deposit from his corporate account this afternoon.”