The Night Eleanor Switched On the Clippers Was the Night Three Years of House Payments Came to an End

I didn’t answer a single one.

I turned the phone facedown on my lap, took a slow sip of peppermint tea, and watched the yellow streetlights of Cicero slide by in the damp night air.

The electric sign over the bank on Marion Street said eleven twenty-eight when I turned my sedan onto Maple Street.

The two-story brick house was completely dark from top to bottom except for the one yellow porch bulb burning over the front door.

The electric bill on the kitchen desk that morning had shown four hundred and twelve dollars due by the fifteenth.