I wanted it. For about four seconds I wanted it so badly my ears rang.

That folder was the thing I hadn’t been able to prove for two and a half years, the thing that turned Grant’s careless shrug into a check with his signature on it, and it had walked up my own front steps and offered itself to me.

And I thought about a man I’d known for six years, who’d given me an extra week on the rent more times than I could count, spending his last decade in a courthouse instead of at his daughter’s kitchen table.

“I’m keeping it,” I said. “I’m going to show it to my lawyer, because I’d be a fool not to, and I’m not going to be a fool ever again. But she’s not going to use it against you. She’s going to use it against him.”

Abernathy’s mouth worked. He put his hat on and then took it off again.

“I’d have understood either way,” he said.