Chapter 8

On Thursday the board read 6.

That morning Halene had passed my chair and said only, "Six," the way you read a meter.

The house photographs were set for the next morning, and the kitchen was nearly gone.

Boxes ran along the back wall in three high rows.

The photographer's text sat lit on Kit's phone: Nine a.m. Counters clear. Cabinets and drawers empty.

The refrigerator calendar had July 31 circled under the word PHOTOS, the red marker pressed hard enough to bleed through to July.

Every square before today was crossed off.

The only flat surface left was the folding table under the window.

An hour earlier Kit had emptied the utensil drawer and found the dried curl of orange peel I kept in the back corner.

She held it under her nose.

"Mom, that's from Christmas," she said, and dropped it in the trash.

She ate a granola bar standing over the sink, then washed the same mug twice.

Now she sat at the table with my letter open in front of her.

She wasn't reading it the way you read an old note.

She was reading it like a shift log, checking the same line against something I couldn't see.

"Please call her if you want to know the part I never asked."

She said it out loud to the empty kitchen, in her flat dispatch voice.

"I already called her. I already went. That makes it information, not an instruction."

She tapped the page with two fingers.

"You don't get to hand me chores out of a drawer, Mom."

I wanted to tell her it hadn't been a chore.

Then I looked at what I'd written, and I couldn't make that sound true.

I had wanted the letter to be an instruction.

I had spent years handing Kit errands that asked for small, visible love because I didn't know how to offer the invisible kind.

The letter was one more errand, in my best handwriting.

Kit got up and pulled the shallow drawer out one last time.

It was empty except for a pale rectangle on the shelf paper where the envelope had lain.

She wiped the shelf paper with a damp towel and slid the drawer shut.

"Tomorrow a man is going to take a picture of your sink," she told the room.

She said it flat, but her voice caught on the word sink.

Halene stopped behind my chair when the console light began to blink.

"Ten minutes left on the block."

"I know."

"She's not doing anything wrong down there."

"I know that too." My voice came out smaller than I meant. "I keep wanting her to be."

Halene didn't smile, but she didn't leave right away either.

I had spent six weeks wishing the house would stay unsold until Kit read the letter.

That was a wish about my comfort, not hers.

The house could be photographed and sold.

I could finally see that without feeling the floor drop.

The truth wasn't in the house.

The house was only where I had hidden it.

I still had one gray slip folded in my back pocket.

I took it out and read the empty line at the bottom.

Kit wasn't doing anything I could point to and ask a draft to fix, so I put it away.

Kit closed the last upper cabinet.

She stacked four mismatched mugs into a carton and carried it to the porch pile.

The table she left exactly where it was.

Then she picked up the letter and folded it once, the way you fold a receipt you plan to keep.

She slid it into her back pocket.

She pulled out her phone.

"Bernice? It's Kit."

I could hear the same high scrape of Bernice's voice through the receiver.

"I'll come by the fare-help table once."

Kit waited a second.

"On my own terms."