“Marcus,” I said.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me.

Thank the auditor who drove in from Columbus on a Friday.” A chair scraped somewhere on his end.

“I’ll send the deed copy this week.

It’s already recorded in your name alone.”

The deed went into the kitchen drawer that afternoon, under the divorce papers, and I laid the brass key down beside them.

The key that had let me back into my own house sat there with a pen and a book of stamps and a rubber band, and it looked like nothing at all.