“Do I owe the club anything for it?”

“No,” Victoria said.

“But I thought somebody in that ledger deserved a decent afternoon.”

She hung up before I could properly thank her.

My father looked up from the dustpan with the pencil still in his hand.

“Nobody leaves a man like that because of the man,” he said.

“They leave him because of the bill.”

He left at four with his tools in a canvas bag and a paper cup of coffee he never drank, carrying it the whole way to the car.