Marsha and I had lived next door to each other for twenty-two years in Dayton.

She brought my mail in when I had cataract surgery back in October. I fed her fat gray cat, Pickles, when her mother was in the hospital down in Cincinnati. We were not dramatic women. We were casserole, coupons, and calling each other when a strange truck slowed down too much on our dead-end street.

So when she came over at 2:16 on a Thursday with no coat and one slipper, I knew before she spoke that something had gone wrong.

She held the shutoff notice like it was dirty.

Her hands were red from dishwater. She had been washing Dale’s breakfast cereal bowl when the electric company called about the rejected payment on their auto-pay.

“I thought it was a mistake,” she said.

I sat her down at my kitchen table and put the kettle on, even though neither of us wanted tea. The old habit did what it could. My house smelled like lemon furniture polish and the cabbage soup I had ruined for lunch because my mind was wandering.

Marsha opened her banking app with shaking fingers.

Twelve dollars and three cents.

That was what Dale left her after thirty-one years of marriage.

He had moved $17,440 out in six separate transfers between 8:02 and 8:19 that morning while she was down in the basement doing whites. Then he came home at noon, packed his fishing shirts into two canvas bags, and told her he was going to stay with a woman named Renee from his bowling league over off Route 4.

Marsha called him while she sat at my table.

He answered on speaker. I could hear the wind rushing past his truck window and the annoying dinging sound his Ford makes when the door is left ajar.

She asked him how she was supposed to pay the light bill.

He laughed right into the microphone. “You can’t even afford a lawyer.”

Then he hung up. A short little click, like he had flickered a light switch.

I watched Marsha’s face. She did not cry. She folded the shutoff notice into fourths, then eighths, until it was a hard little square that cut into her palm.

That was when I remembered the cousin.

At Thanksgiving, Dale had made a loud joke about Marsha’s cousin Nina, the one from Memphis who wore plain black flats and asked too many dry questions about the county courthouse and house titles. Dale called her the discount lawyer because Nina drove a 2011 Corolla with one missing hubcap and a rusted bumper.

Nina had not laughed at his joke. She just looked at Dale the way a butcher looks at a side of beef before he prices it.

Marsha looked across my table at me and said, “Nina told me to call if he ever tried anything.”

“Then call,” I said.

She shook her head once, her gray hair coming loose from its clip. “I feel stupid.”

I told her stupid was ignoring a rope when somebody throws it right at your feet.

Nina answered on the first ring.

Marsha only got through half the story about the twelve dollars and the bowling league before Nina interrupted her. “Do not text him. Do not warn him. Take screenshots of the account balance and the shutoff notice right now. I’m leaving my office.”

At 4:28, a gray Corolla turned into my gravel driveway way too fast, small stones popping against the metal siding of my garage.

Nina stepped out wearing a sharp gray blazer, carrying a heavy leather briefcase, a notary stamp, and the calmest face I have ever seen on a blood relative.

Dale picked that exact moment to call back.

Nina looked at Marsha’s phone screen, then at me, and said, “Put him on speaker. I want him to repeat it word for word.”

Marsha tapped the green button with a trembling thumb.

“Look,” Dale said before Marsha could even say hello, “if you’re calling about the power, figure it out. My name is off the bill. Renee says hi.”

Nina leaned over the table, her voice level and sharp as a carpet tack. “Mr. Miller. This is Nina Vance. Licensed attorney in Ohio, Tennessee, and Kentucky. I am sitting in your kitchen with your wife.”

The line went dead silent. You could hear the hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of a lawnmower three streets over.

“Mr. Miller?” Nina said into the dead air. “Are you still on the road?”

“Who is this?” Dale stammered, his tough-guy voice cracking right down the middle like dry ice.

“Her counsel,” Nina said, her pen already clicking against the table. “By 5:00 PM today, I am filing an emergency asset-freeze motion for the entirety of the seventeen thousand four hundred forty dollars you transferred this morning, plus temporary spousal support, plus legal fees. If you use one dime of those funds for your bowling girlfriend, the judge won’t just take your truck. He’ll take your pension too. Do you understand me?”

Dale didn’t laugh this time. He didn’t say a single word about lawyers.

The line clicked off with a sharp beep.

Nina didn’t even look up from her paperwork. She pulled three printed forms out of her leather briefcase and slid them across my lemon-polished table toward Marsha.

“Sign here,” Nina said softly. “And then let’s go turn your power back on.”