Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
The Thursday before Thanksgiving, Sophie didn’t see the notification until three. Her phone had been silenced for the meeting, then buried beneath a folder while she helped move a display case. She opened the app expecting to see a delivery driver and watched Lorraine unlock the front door.
She played it again. The time stamp showed eleven seventeen, while Sophie had been leading the meeting.
Lorraine carried a large canvas bag and a folded quilt, but Sophie barely looked at either.
The key entered the lock, Lorraine’s wrist turned, and the door opened without resistance.
Sophie watched the ordinary little movement five times before she called Jesse.
He didn’t answer. She sent him the clip with no message, then packed her bag and told her colleague she needed to go home. She drove through town with both hands gripping the wheel, stopping at a red light so abruptly that the bag on the passenger seat slid onto the floor.
The departure clip showed Lorraine leaving at twelve four, but Sophie stood in the hall listening. Her perfume lingered. The canvas bag had looked heavier when she left; Sophie hadn’t noticed that until now.
Her wedding photograph was missing from the hall table.
She found it on a shelf in the study, facedown behind a bowl of spare batteries.
The proof album Nina had delivered the previous week was gone from the low cabinet; they’d chosen a few uncorrected family pages to check the layout before the final printing.
Sophie opened the cabinet again and moved two magazines aside, though the book had been larger than either of them.
Upstairs, Jesse’s childhood quilt covered their bed. It was blue and brown, worn at the corners, and it lay over the duvet Sophie had washed on Sunday. A corner of dark red silk hung from the drawer beside the bed.
Sophie stopped with her hand on the quilt. She had put the silk away that morning, beneath a folded cotton nightdress.
Inside the drawer, everything had been folded differently. Her bras were nested together, the dark red silk set she had bought for the honeymoon placed on top, and a packet of stockings had been moved from the back to the front. Sophie touched the silk with one finger, then pulled her hand away.
Jesse called while she was standing there. She answered without saying hello.
“I’m coming home,” he said. There was traffic noise behind him. “Don’t do anything yet.”
Sophie looked at the quilt. “What would I do?” she asked. “What are you worried I’ll do?”
“I just mean wait for me. We’ll figure out what happened.”
She ended the call and checked the bathroom cabinet, the shelf where they kept their passports, and the drawers in the study. In the kitchen she opened the cupboard with Marianne’s bowls, then closed it and opened it again. She couldn’t remember which way she’d left the chipped rim facing.
Jesse arrived twelve minutes later. He called her name from the hall, and Sophie waited at the top of the stairs until he looked up. His gaze moved past her to the quilt on their bed.
“Why did she have a key?” Sophie didn’t move aside when he reached the landing.
“What did she do?” He looked past her into the bedroom.
“Answer me,” Sophie said. She held up her phone, the clip still open on the screen.
He rubbed at the plaster on his sleeve. Sophie repeated the question, louder.
“She was only supposed to use it in an emergency.” He met her eyes.
“You gave it back.” Sophie said it slowly, still holding out the phone. The little clip began playing again between them, and she pressed the screen until it stopped.
“Yes,” Jesse said. “I took it from the kitchen drawer. I was keeping it at the office in case we locked ourselves out. Then she came in and asked for it. She promised she’d only use it in an emergency.”
“The day I came by,” Sophie said. She remembered the bakery box, his hands folding the hotel confirmation, the careful way he had said it was fine.
He didn’t answer. She went into the bedroom and dropped the phone onto the dresser, where it struck a perfume bottle hard enough to tip it over.
“She went through my underwear,” Sophie said. She opened the drawer and stepped aside. “She put that on top.”
Jesse looked into it. His eyes stayed on the red silk, and Sophie wanted to shut the drawer before he could see anything else. She had imagined showing it to him at the lake, with the lights low and his hands already on her.
“She took the album,” Sophie said. She left the drawer open. “And my things were put away. She had to open this to find them.”
“I’m calling her.” His thumb fumbled on the screen.
Sophie sat on the edge of the bed and immediately stood again because the quilt was beneath her. She pulled it off, dropped it on the floor, and stripped the duvet too. Lorraine’s perfume followed the fabric into a heap at her feet.
“Mom,” Jesse said when the call connected. “Why were you in the house?”
Sophie kept moving. She dragged the suitcase from the wardrobe and laid it open on the bare mattress. Jesse watched her, his face draining, while Lorraine spoke into his ear.
“Gas?” he repeated. He looked toward the window. “Why didn’t you call me?”
Sophie stopped. She reached for the phone, and he put it on speaker without handing it over.
“I smelled it near the back,” Lorraine said. “I thought something might be wrong. Thank goodness I had the key.”
“Did you call the gas company?” Sophie stood beside the suitcase with a sweater in her hand.
Lorraine paused. “It cleared,” she said. “Once I checked inside, I realized it was probably from the street.”
Jesse asked about the album. Lorraine said it had been near a damp window and she had taken it to keep it safe, which made Sophie look toward the study, where the album had never been near a window.
When he asked about the bedroom, Lorraine said she had brought the quilt because the nights were getting cold and had straightened a drawer that was standing open.
“It was closed.” Sophie packed the sweater. “I closed it this morning.”
“I may have opened it looking for a pillowcase,” Lorraine said. Her voice had become wounded. “You’re making this sound so unpleasant.”
Jesse stared at the phone. “Bring the album back,” he said. “And don’t go in the house again.”
“Then why did you give me the key?” Lorraine asked. The softness disappeared for a moment. “You said emergencies. I was worried.”
Sophie laughed, a short ugly sound. Jesse looked at her, and she put another sweater into the suitcase because if she stopped moving she might begin screaming.
“I have to go,” he told Lorraine. He ended the call before she finished answering.
He tried calling Hank while she packed. Sophie heard him ask how long his mother had been planning to come over, then say Hank’s name sharply when the answer went on too long. She put her shoes into the suitcase without bags around them and saw the marks they left on a cream sweater.
“She’s wanted that album since it came,” Jesse said after he hung up. “Dad says she asked him to drive her last week. He said no.”
Sophie sat on the end of the stripped mattress. The phone slipped from Jesse’s fingers onto the quilt he’d picked up from the floor, and he stared at it instead of retrieving it.
“You didn’t tell him she had a key either?” she asked. She pulled the marked sweater from the suitcase and threw it toward the laundry basket.
“I thought it would be fine.” Jesse picked up the phone. “I thought you’d never have to know.”
He looked at her then. Sophie got up and went to the wardrobe for another sweater, stepping over the one she’d thrown.
For several seconds there was no sound except the zipper on Sophie’s toiletry bag. She went into the bathroom, gathered the things she used every morning, and returned to find Jesse standing beside the suitcase.
“Don’t pack,” Jesse said. He took a shirt out of the suitcase and held it against his chest.
“Put that down,” Sophie said. She took it from him when he didn’t move.
“I made a mistake,” he said. “I thought she’d learned. She’s been fine for weeks.”
“Because she had what she wanted. And I didn’t know.”
He shook his head. “It was for emergencies. I wasn’t inviting her over.”
“You told me no key.” Her voice finally broke. “You knelt beside my chair and promised me.”
“I know,” he said. He reached for her, then stopped when she stepped back. “I know. I’m sorry.”
She zipped the suitcase. Jesse moved to help when she lifted it from the bed, but she carried it to the door herself.
“Where are you going?” He stood between her and the bedroom door.
“Kelly’s,” Sophie said. She took the handle. “Move.”
He stayed in front of the door for two or three seconds. Then he looked at the suitcase, at her hand holding the handle, and stepped back with one hand pressed against the frame.
“Please,” he said. His fingers tightened against the doorframe. “Don’t leave over my mother.”
Sophie stopped beside him. “You gave her the key,” she said. “You lied to me. Stop making her the only person who did something.”
He let go of the door. She carried the suitcase downstairs, refusing his offer to take it, and put it in her car while he stood on the porch. When she looked back, he had one hand against the doorframe and the other pressed over his mouth.
At the first intersection she pulled into a pharmacy parking lot and cried so hard she couldn’t call Kelly.
She sat with the engine running until the windows began to fog, then wiped her face with a napkin and sent a message asking whether the guest room was free.
Kelly called immediately, and Sophie answered on the third ring.
“Come here,” Kelly said after Sophie managed three sentences. Her voice was steady and practical. “I’ll put the kettle on.”