She walked over to the small writing desk in the corner of the room, where Tyler kept his spare bills and tax receipts.
“He has to come back for his clothes, Madison,” she said.
“He left his key on the kitchen counter,” I said.
She stopped with her hand on the brass drawer pull of the desk.
“He did not take his key?” she asked.
“It was next to his sunglasses when I went into the kitchen this morning,” I said.
Dana pulled her hand away from the drawer, her eyebrows drawing together in a hard line.
“That is not someone who is running late,” she said.
My father sat at the kitchen table with his gray cap resting beside a salt shaker. He had spread the yellow copy of the White Oak Manor venue contract across the Formica surface, smoothing the creases with his thumb. The paper showed the total amount of eighteen thousand four hundred dollars, marked paid in full with a red ink stamp.
“The bank loan officer told me the first payment is due on the first of the month,” he said.
His hand had a slight, persistent tremor that made the edge of the paper rustle against the table.
“I can take extra shifts at the hospital,” I said, standing by the stove.
“You have clinical rotations five days a week, Maddie,” he said.
“I can find night work,” I said.
He rolled his cap between his hands, his fingers tracing the worn fabric of the brim.
“I took the money out of the pension fund because Tyler promised his commission would clear by June,” he said.
“He told me the real estate firm was holding the funds in escrow,” I said.
“A firm like that does not hold a sixty-day commission,” my father said, his voice dropping an octave.
He pointed a thick finger at the line on the contract where Tyler’s mother had written her initials.
“Why did she have to sign as a witness if Tyler was the one paying?” he asked.
“She said it was a formality for the venue,” I said.
“She spent eighteen months telling us this place was not good enough for her family,” he said.
He closed his eyes for a second, his chest rising and falling in a slow, heavy breath.
“Now we owe eighteen thousand four hundred dollars to a bank in Richmond, and Tyler is gone,” he said.
“He will pay it back, Dad,” I said, though the words tasted like dry paper in my mouth.
He looked up at me, his eyes clouded with a quiet, protective anger.
“How are you going to make him pay if you cannot find him?” he asked.
I went into the bedroom and shut the door behind me. The apartment was too quiet, the kind of stillness that makes you listen to the hum of the refrigerator. I walked to the closet and pulled the light string, illuminating the neat rows of my scrubs and the single dark suit Tyler had left behind on its wooden hanger.
On the top shelf, behind a stack of folded blankets, sat his small oak desk organizer. I pulled it down and carried it to the bed, setting it on the quilt.
