“These belong to Clara and me,” I said.

“Nobody else uses an emergency key in this house.”

Pruitt wrote the invoice on his knee and tore out the carbon.

Four hundred and sixty dollars, and I wrote the check on the porch rail with the baby on my hip and my purse hooked over my elbow.

His truck was barely off the block when a county car pulled up to the curb behind it.

Edith Mallow came up the walk with a manila envelope held flat, the way you carry a plate of something that could spill.