Page 241 of ClickBack

I photograph our drinks and send the picture to Jarrett, telling him not to come looking for me yet. Bellamy reaches for hers just as I take it. We keep that picture. It looks like the afternoon we are having.

By Wednesday, I have rearranged the rental’s desk, found a grocery store I like, and learned that the bathroom switch nearest the door turns on everything except the light I need.

Jarrett has learned to wait until I finish a client call before asking how badly it went.

Most days.

“The retreat wasn’t client development,” I tell Bradley through my earbuds. “You sent me pictures of yourself on a horse.”

“There was a communication exercise.”

“With whom?”

“The group.”

“Then send me the agenda for the group. Your tax preparer is going to want more than a saddle receipt.”

Jarrett appears in the doorway on his way out, trying to decide whether he has heard enough to laugh. I point down the hall. He puts a hand over his mouth and leaves.

Bradley spends another few minutes promising documentation. After him, I have a salon owner in Ardmore who has finally stopped paying personal bills from the operating account. She announces this before I can ask, then makes me look at the transactions while she waits. I congratulate her. We go through the month without an argument.

When I close her file, it is barely lunchtime here. I make a sandwich, stand in the rental’s kitchen eating it, then sit at the table to finish. Nobody needs me to keep moving.

Graves comes by at two to take me to the storage unit. Jarrett mentioned an old lamp there after complaining about the overhead lighting in this place. I remembered it when I saw a photograph of his Philadelphia living room in my phone. Graves knows which box it is in because he made the inventory. He confirms with Jarrett that we can collect it, then helps me unwrap it in the back of the SUV.

“You like this thing?” he asks.

“It has a good shape.”

“His mother tried to replace it twice.”

“He told me.”

“Then he told you how it got dented.”

I look at him. “No.”

Graves carefully turns the brass base toward me. “Indoor basketball. He blamed me.”

“Was it you?”

“I was the guest.”

“That is not an answer.”

He puts the packing material away. “It worked then.”

When Jarrett comes home, the lamp is on the table beside the sofa. He stops in the doorway, his workout bag still over his shoulder.

“You got it.”

“It looks better here than in a box.”

He puts down his bag and runs his fingers over the brass.

“Mom had this before the house in Maryland. Used to be a table right beside it. Every picture of me on the first day of school has that lamp in it.”

“I’d like to see those.”