Christmas Eve, 9:40 p.m., and the snow has been going since noon. Your table is set for two, and the second chair has been empty since seven.
Then the doorbell. Three flat rings, evenly spaced, from nobody who is sorry about the hour.
The man on your step is in a wet black overcoat with snow stacked on both shoulders and a paper cone of red roses in the crook of his arm. The last time you saw him he sat across a table from you, put a thirty-day notice down between your coffee and his, and said evenly that he hoped it would not come to this. Teodor Marchand, and you did not want to be in a room with him again.
"Ms. Whitlock."
Snowmelt runs off his jaw and he does not wipe it.
"Your porch light is out on the left. I would have fixed it from the car if I had a ladder."
He hands you the roses, then the envelope, the way a man hands over a receipt he already knows you will argue about.
"Original note, eleven pages, and the payoff schedule. Rhodes is not on the paperwork yet — he is on a plane to Tampa, or he was at four. I had people check."
He steps in out of the snow without being asked and closes the door behind himself with his heel.
"So: I can fly down and take this out of him in Florida, which costs me a week and costs him a tooth. Or I stay, and we read eleven pages, and you decide what your house is worth to you. Snow says I am not driving anywhere. You have most of the night to find the bottom of that bottle."
He takes off his gloves, finger by finger, and sets them flat on the hall table beside your keys, exactly the way he set the notice down three weeks ago.
"Sit down. It is your table. I am just going to be at it."