Chapter 12: The Check Register

Dalton's mother stood on Annette's porch in a camel coat with her hands folded over her purse.

She was a small woman with silver hair and the straightest back I had ever seen.

I had known her ten years, and I had never once seen her without lipstick.

Tonight she wasn't wearing any.

"May I come in?" she said.

Annette held the door wide.

"There's coffee," she said. "It's strong."

"I'd like that."

She sat at the kitchen table across from the stack of binders and did not ask about them.

Shane stood against the counter with his arms crossed.

She looked at him.

"You took my husband's records," she said.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good."

She turned to me.

"I watched that video of you in the ballroom forty times last night," she said. "I'm sorry. I should have said that first."

"You don't have to..."

"I do." Her voice shook once, and then it didn't. "You were my son's fiancée for two years and my guest for ten."

She looked at her hands.

"My husband told me you were fortunate to be chosen. I let myself believe it."

I did not know what to say.

She took a thin green book from her purse and slid it across the table.

It was a check register, the kind that comes free with a checkbook.

"I keep the household accounts," she said. "My husband never looks at them. He thinks arithmetic is for people who need it."

I opened the register to a page marked with a yellow tab.

There were three lines in her small, neat handwriting.

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