I stepped out of the study and met her near the stairs. She was wearing her gray sweatshirt, her face flushed from her morning run, her dark hair damp around her temples.
“Mara, did you move some papers off my desk this week?” I asked.
She stopped on the bottom step, her hand resting on the wooden banister. She looked at my face, then down at my hands, which were still damp from the dishwater.
“What kind of papers?” she asked, her voice high and quick.
“The green folder from the bottom drawer,” I said. “The one with the phone records from the lawyer.”
Mara reached up and pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail, her fingers twisting the black elastic band three times. Her hand was shaking against the fabric of her sleeve, a small, rapid tremor she tried to hide by tucking her thumb into her palm.
“I don’t go through your drawers, Mom,” she said, looking past my shoulder toward the kitchen.
“It was there on Tuesday when I filed the water bill,” I said.
“Maybe you misplaced it,” she said, her words overlapping mine before I could finish the sentence. “You’ve been forgetting where you put things lately.”
She turned and ran up the stairs, her steps loud on the pine treads, leaving me standing in the narrow hallway with the smell of her lavender laundry detergent.
I walked into the dining room, where the light was better, and sat at the long cherry wood table. The grocery list for the party was spread out on the polished wood, next to a small stack of coupons I had clipped from the Sunday paper.
Ethan was already sitting there, his fifteen-year-old shoulders hunched over a blank sheet of lined paper. He was cracking his knuckles, one by one, a habit he had started during the first month of the separation.
