Chapter 4: The Woman Who Visits on Thursdays
I stepped back from the dresser and moved to the doorway.
My mother was at the top of the stairs.
She had changed into a dress I didn't recognize — deep green, fitted, the kind of thing she wore when she wanted to look like the host and not the guest.
Behind her, at the bottom of the stairs, two of her friends had drifted into the entryway, watching.
"You're home early," she said.
"I am."
"You should have called.
I would have had Elise set a place for you."
"Elise's hands are wrapped in bandages."
A small pause.
"She burned herself.
It happens."
"She's been washing dishes since before lunch."
My mother tilted her head slightly.
"The party doesn't clean itself, Nathan.
I asked her to manage the kitchen.
That's a reasonable thing to ask of someone who lives in a house."
"She's not staff.
She's my wife."
"And I'm your mother." Her voice didn't rise.
That was the thing about Marlene Callahan — she never raised her voice when she thought she was winning.
"I've been running this household while you travel.
Someone has to."
"I'd like to see what's in your bottom drawer."
The pause this time was different.
Shorter.
Controlled.
"I beg your pardon?"
"The locked drawer.
In your dresser."
She laughed — the social laugh, the one for audiences.
She half-turned toward her friends at the bottom of the stairs.
"My son comes home two days early and goes straight to my bedroom." She looked back at me.
"Whatever Sophie told you, she's five years old.
She doesn't understand what she saw."
"What did she see?"
"Papers.
Adult papers.
Nothing that concerns a child."
"They concern my wife.
So they concern me."
My mother descended one step toward me.
Her voice dropped.
"Nathan.
There are twenty people in my dining room.
People who know our family.
I am asking you, as your mother, to go downstairs, sit at the table, and have dinner.
We can discuss whatever you think you need to discuss after my guests have gone home."
"Tell me about the woman with the red hair."
Her expression didn't change.
But something behind it did.
"I don't know what you mean."
"She visits on Thursdays.
She brings a black bag.
Sophie's seen her more than once."
"I have many friends."
"Is she a lawyer?"
"Nathan—"
"Is she a notary?"
My mother straightened.
"I want you to lower your voice."
"I haven't raised it."
She studied me for a moment.
Then she did something I hadn't expected.
She smiled — not the social smile.
Something smaller and more certain.
"Go downstairs," she said.
"Eat.
Sleep.
You're tired from traveling.
Everything looks different when you're tired." She turned and started back down the stairs.
"I'll have Elise bring you a plate."
I watched her go.
At the bottom of the stairs she rejoined her guests, and within seconds her laugh was back in the room, easy and warm, as though nothing had happened.
One of her friends said something.
She touched the woman's arm.
And then, just before she turned the corner into the dining room, her hand went to her necklace.
The key.
She checked it without thinking.
The way you check something you're afraid of losing.
I went back downstairs.
Not to the dining room.
To the kitchen, where Elise was still standing at the counter, the dishes finished, her bandaged hands folded in front of her.
"She checked the key," I said.
Elise looked up.
"I need you to tell me everything," I said.
"From the beginning.
All of it."
She was quiet for a long moment.
May you like
Then she pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down.
"It started about three months after she moved in," she said.
