“A little light bending is good for labor,” she said, her voice carrying that sharp, critical instruction she always tried to pass off as helpful advice. “My mother scrubbed her own kitchen floors the morning I was born, and she was sixty-two before she ever had a knee problem.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but a tight, hard squeeze bloomed across my lower stomach, catching my breath. My fingers tightened against the wooden frame of the door, my knuckles turning white.
“Are you listening to me, Claire?” Diane asked, her eyes narrowing as she patted her hair again.
The contraction peaked and then slowly drifted away, leaving a dull ache in my lower back that made me want to sit down immediately.
“I hear you,” I said, keeping my voice quiet and deliberate.
“Good,” she said, turning her back to adjust a porcelain figurine on the mantel. “And the heavy silver tea set in the dining room needs a good polish before we get back on Sunday.”
I looked down at the brass front door key sitting on the side table by the entryway, its metal polished and bright under the hall light. My grandmother had handed me that key three years ago when she signed over the deed to the house, and it had never felt so heavy.
“The silver can wait until next week,” I said.
“Nonsense,” Diane said, not looking at me. “My son deserves to come home to a clean house after driving you people around all year.”
“He is driving you, Diane, not me,” I said.
She did not answer, her fingers tracing the edge of the mantle piece to check for dust.
Out in the driveway, the black SUV sat with its rear hatch wide open, smelling of hot leather and rubber. Caleb was lifting three massive hard-shell suitcases into the back while his sister, Brooke, stood near the front bumper, looking at her reflection in her phone screen.
“Can we hurry this up?” Brooke said, her high-pitched, mocking tone cutting through the humid afternoon air. “The traffic on Route 8 is already backed up, and my skin is going to melt out here.”
