He turned the hat around in his hands. “I’ve been meaning to come here since the spring after the — since the hearing. I’ve driven past this street. Four times, I think.”

“Why?”

“Because I lied about you under oath,” he said, “and I have not had a decent night’s sleep in two and a half years.”

The morning was very quiet. Somebody two houses down was running a mower.

He held out the folder. Inside were a deposit slip and a photocopy of a cashier’s check for four thousand dollars, dated eleven days before the custody hearing, drawn on Grant Bellamy’s account and made out to Thomas Abernathy.

Clipped behind it was a printout of a text message on a phone screen, photographed slightly crooked: