The money arrived on a Tuesday. Five thousand dollars, wrapped in a sheet of newsprint. It wasn't a stack of carefully counted bills. It wasn't a check. Nobody owed me money. But the fact that this sum of five thousand dollars came with the rest of the mail, in the form of one bill, made the situation all the worse. Only one person in the world would send me a five thousand dollar bill.

Brad Turlington. The man I thought I knew better than anyone I'd ever known in my life, until the day I learned he was a stranger.

The five thousand dollar bill was in good shape inside a clear plastic sandwich baggie. I flattened it out with the side of my hand. Under the bill, a phone number was scrawled across the newsprint. The familiar area code did little to soothe my mounting anxiety. It was the same area code I'd had when I lived in Philadelphia, before I'd moved to Dallas. I looked at the envelope. It was addressed to me, Madison Night. The address was mine, the handwriting his, the postmark Dallas. If it's true that money talks, then I didn't like what this five thousand dollar bill told me: Brad was alive, he knew my price, and he had found me.

To my untrained eye, it looked like Monopoly money. I set it on my dining room table and stared at it like it was going to do tricks, though the mere act of arriving in the mail, uninsured, in a plain white envelope should have been trick enough. The fact that it delivered a message from a ghost was the cherry on top of the sundae. Or the straw that broke the camel's back. Sometimes, when you're trying to justify your past to your present, it's hard to tell.

I put the bill into a new business-sized envelope and sandwiched it between the pages of the latest Atomic Ranch magazine. There would be time to question Brad's motivation later. Right now it was time to repaint my living room. I pulled a slightly damaged pink hat over my light blonde hair and tucked a few of the longer strands under the band like I would a swim cap. The hat was vinyl, cracked in several places. I'd picked it up at a local secondhand shop for a dollar. It was too beat up to wear outside, but it was the perfect complement to my painting attire: white overalls and a T-shirt printed with yellow and pink daisies.

Two gallons of daffodil-yellow paint, aluminum trays, rollers, and trim brushes sat at the ready.

Rocky, my fluffy caramel-and-white Shih Tzu, bounded out of the bedroom. Sunlight filtered through the window and highlighted stains that had appeared as if by magic on the once new apartment-grade carpeting. As long as I was redoing the walls, I might as well have at the floors too. Considering I owned the building, my decorating therapy was tax deductible.

I turned on the TV and pushed the furniture to the middle of the room. A weatherman predicted the ten-day forecast. Seventy degrees in February. I'd been in Dallas for over two years now, and I'd never get used to it.

After a couple of commercials, a local newsman reported about a traffic jam on Loop 12, a domestic abuse case, and finished with a human interest story about two boys who had found something special while picnicking at the Dallas Arboretum. It was a piece of a five thousand dollar bill.

Repainting the living room was going to have to wait.

The reporter gave a brief history of the bill. First printed in 1928, it remained in circulation for forty-one years, until 1969 when the secretary of the treasury announced that the Federal Reserve would stop distribution of high-denomination bills. At the time the bill was retired, the government had explained that secure transfer technology eliminated the need for large bills, which were originally intended for bank transfer payments. But it was widely rumored that the decision was actually part of President Nixon's efforts to interrupt the dealings of organized crime. The reporter added the irony that James Madison himself had renounced the value of paper money, but was the president pictured on one of the most coveted bills on the collector's circuit.

He turned his attention to the boys. "Now, which one of you found the bill?" The chubbier boy pulled the microphone from his brother's hand. "We had a picnic. I was cleaning up. I found this stuck to one of the plants near the trash cans."

The other boy took the microphone. "Dad said it was play money. We spent hours looking for the rest of it, but our parents said we had to leave."

"Do you know what it's worth?"

The boys shook their heads.

"I'm sure your parents will help you find that out. Can you hold it up for the camera?"

The chubby one held the scrap in front of him. The reporter straightened up and addressed the camera. "The James Madison bill is one of the more collectible units of American currency. Hard to say what a piece of one is worth, but if this had been a complete bill, it might be worth one hundred thousand dollars."

I felt as if someone had turned the temperature down twenty degrees. It was too much of a coincidence, these boys finding a piece of a five thousand dollar bill the same day one had arrived in the mail. A coldness snaked over my bare neck and down my spine. Coincidence, I could have handled.

I moved to the desk chair. A Google search confirmed what the reporter had said about the value of the bill, but even Google couldn't tell me why Brad had sent the $5000 bill to me in the first place. The only place I could look for answers was my past, which meant dredging up memories. Memories I'd learned to block, to ignore, to pretend had never existed.

"I have one, you know. In the back room. Framed. Mr. Pierot must have gotten it in one of his estate buys, but it's not exactly mid-century, so he never displayed it. If you want it, I'll buy it for you."

"Keep it. If you ever need me, and I mean, really, really need me, you know my price."

A tingling sensation radiated from the center of my chest to my fingers and toes, replacing the chill. I didn't want to accept the truth even though it sat right in front of me. The $5000 bill meant one thing.

Brad really, really needed me.

I closed my eyes, and the memories played through my mind like a classic movie that's been watched enough times to be familiar.

"Are you saying you can be bought?"

"Under the right circumstances, with the right motivation, anybody can be bought."

"Sure, but you're not just anybody, Madison."

Memories flooded back to me. The sheets, on the dark cherry wood double bed in the back of Pierot's, the furniture and interior decorating business in Philadelphia where we first met. The bed was part of the store's inventory until Brad and I christened it. One night, he carved our initials into the wood, a silly gesture that slashed the resale value. Two perfectly good apartments, two consenting adults, and we spent three nights a week in a double bed in the back of a mid-century modern furniture store like a couple of teenagers in the back seat of a soccer mom's SUV borrowed for a date.

I shook my head to make the unwanted memories go away. Rocky danced around my feet. I ruffled the fur on top of his head and leaned down to plant a kiss in the middle of it. "We're okay by ourselves, right Rocky? Our life is perfect just the way it is."

"That's too bad. I was hoping you'd be happy to see me."

The voice was as familiar as if I'd heard it yesterday. I straightened up and turned to face the front door....