“What’s it worth and how fast can you cash it out?” The dead bolt gives, and I trample inside, tapping in the code for the alarm. I don’t bother with the lights, or even closing the door behind me. I’m not going to be here for long.

“Besides the fact that you’d have to pay a penalty fee plus taxes on the entire amount, did you hear what I just said about the stock market? Don’t touch your IRA, Cam. You’d take a huge hit.”

“I need to know what it’s worth.”

“God, I don’t know. Half a million if you’re lucky.”

The number sticks to my stomach like an ulcer. I haven’t logged in to the account since the last time the stock market took a nosedive. Too painful, especially since my strategy was to wait it out. I’m young, not quite forty. I figured I wouldn’t have to touch it for a while.

But a half million? Shit. It should be at least double that.

“Do it,” I say, my shoes squeaking on the polished concrete floor. “But there’s one caveat. I need the money today.”

I’m moving fast through the dim space, past the factory-style windows high on the exposed brick walls, hung with the twinkle lights I inherited from the caterer I bought the place from. Jade didn’t do much other than throw some vintage rugs over the polished concrete floor, add some couches and chairs—“conversation corners,” she calls them. And in the middle of the room, a glass chandelier over a giant oak table she designed herself, littered with cookbooks and papers. I can’t walk by the thing without thinking back to the night we broke it in; Baxter was born ten months later.

On the other end of the phone, Ed chokes on a laugh, a loud phlegmy bark. “You can’t... That’s... Look, I want to work with you, I really do, but that’s impossible. Your IRA isn’t liquid. We’re going to have to sell off the stocks first, and there are transfer times—”

“I need the money, Ed. Like yesterday.” I settle my cell on a shelf in the storage room, giving him time for the realization to sink.

A long, painful silence.

I plug the code into the safe, and the lock slides open with a metallic thwunk.

“Is this about the fire?” Ed says finally. “Because if it is, I can maybe help get the ball rolling with the insurance company. You’re with Hartford, right?”

“This isn’t about the fire.” I turn around, scanning the shelves for a box, a bag. Something small and inconspicuous. I spot a shoebox on the top shelf filled with old receipts and dump them onto the floor.

“Then what?”