Chapter 8: Mom at the Door

My mother and Harvey arrived at nine on Saturday morning with a bag of bagels and a tub of chive cream cheese.

Flora and I had been awake until four.

I opened the door in gray sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt that hid the marks on my wrists.

My mother kissed my cheek and looked me over.

"You look tired, honey."

"I work nights, Mom."

"You work too much."

Joan Moreau is fifty-eight years old, five foot five, with short gray curls and reading glasses on a chain.

She walked through my apartment.

She ran her finger along the bookshelf, checked the fridge, and put her head into the guest room.

I stopped breathing.

Flora's duffel bags sat in the corner, and the bed was made with hospital corners.

Flora had made it herself at seven that morning, grinning at me over the pillow.

"Oh, how tidy," my mother said. "You two are getting along."

"We're getting along great, Mrs. Moreau," Flora called from the kitchen.

"Joan, sweetheart. We're family."

"Joan," Flora said, and her voice had a smile in it that only I could hear.

Harvey Hallam sat down at my kitchen table and spread out a bagel.

He is sixty-one, broad, with a white mustache and flannel shirts, and he ran a machine shop for forty years.

He is the gentlest man I know, and he was about to find out nothing.

"Florrie, tell me about this garden," he said.

Flora slid into the chair across from me.

She had put on her overalls with no shirt under them, and the bib gaped slightly when she leaned forward.

I looked at the bagel on my plate with great attention.

My mother took one end of the table, and Harvey took the other.

Flora and I sat across from each other in the middle.

The tablecloth was long, my grandmother's, white linen with a lace edge.

It hung almost to the floor.

"We're planting herbs along the south wall," Flora said to her father. "Rosemary, thyme. Sage. A bench with string lights."

"Sounds beautiful."

"It will be."

Something touched my ankle.

It was her bare foot.

I kept my face still.

Her foot slid slowly up the inside of my calf, over my knee, and onto my thigh.

I picked up my coffee with a hand that did not shake.

"Robin, are you going to make the pies this year?" my mother asked. "Harvey wants pecan."

"Pecan. Yes."

Flora's foot pushed between my thighs.

The sole pressed against the crotch of my sweatpants, firm and warm, and my whole body went rigid.

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