Harrison stood on the front porch at 7:08 in the evening, dress shirt damp at the collar, and held out a white envelope thick with cash. Eleanor counted it at the dining table while he waited. Eighteen hundred exactly. No more. No note.
“Where from?” she asked.
“I sold the rims off the car,” he said. “And I borrowed from Denise. I’ll pay her back myself.”
“Denise.”
“She said you’d taught her how to lend without making a person small. She said I should’ve come to her first instead of you.”
Eleanor stacked the bills. She put them in the drawer where she kept the tax account’s backup cash. The bills were warm from his pocket, some new, some folded soft. She thought of Aunt Ruth’s twenties and felt the old chain of women tighten and then loosen into something like continuity. “Your wife know you’re here?”
“She thinks I’m at the gym.”