The third knock against the locked glass door made the candy dish on Linda Howard’s desk tremble, and everyone in the lobby turned at once. A man in a navy sport coat stood outside with one palm flat against the glass and the other wrapped around his phone, rain darkened hair pushed back from his forehead, his mouth pulled tight in a way I had only seen twice before in his life, once when he was eighteen and his truck was repossessed and once when his father told him he would not pay off a gambling debt Garrett insisted on calling a misunderstanding. The receptionist’s chair rolled backward with a squeal. Linda did not flinch. She pressed a button under her desk and somewhere beyond the hallway a lock clicked deeper into place.My phone kept vibrating against the polished wood between us. Garrett. Garrett. Garrett. The screen lit my hand pale blue each time.

Linda looked at me over the top of her reading glasses. “Do you want me to have him removed from the vestibule, Edith?”The office smelled like paper and printer heat and coffee that had been sitting too long on a warmer. Behind me, I could hear the low scrape of customers shifting their shoes on the lobby tile. The signed forms were stacked in a crisp pile at my elbow. The top page still showed the indent of my name where the pen had pressed hardest.“No,” I said. “Let him come in. He should hear it while the ink is still wet.”Linda gave the receptionist a nod through the glass. Before she buzzed him in, my eyes dropped once more to the monitor angled toward me. The River Ridge mortgage draft was still there in a gray box. Rejected. Under it, two more lines were already turning red. Marissa’s country club dues and the auto insurance draft for the Lexus. A whole life, blinking.