Chapter 3

I hung Grant's jacket back on the center hook.

Two hundred dollars was waiting at the end of four hours. Willa's activity fee was due Monday morning.

I picked up my caddy and walked into the kitchen.

Audrey's kitchen was already clean.

There were no crumbs beneath the toaster, no grease above the stove, and no fingerprints around the cabinet pulls.

A pale scratch curved across one corner of the marble island.

I ran a gloved finger over it. The groove was too deep to have come from a cleaning cloth. Somebody had dragged a heavy pan or a metal serving tray across the polished stone.

Audrey's cleaner might have lied about making the mark. Or Audrey might have blamed the easiest person to fire.

Either way, I photographed the scratch with my phone before I cleaned around it. I had learned to document damage before anyone could blame me for it.

I wiped down the counters, cleaned both bathrooms, vacuumed the living room rug, and carried my supplies into the corner office.

Audrey had asked me to empty the wastebasket and dust the desk. The heavy walnut desk was uncluttered except for a brass lamp and a square leather photo album.

I emptied the trash bin. Then I lifted the album to wipe beneath it.

I had been paid to clean beneath the album, not look inside it.

I set it back on the desk.

Then I opened it.

Grant stood shin-deep in the surf, laughing with his head tilted back toward the sky. Tobin sat on his shoulders, holding Grant's ears. Beside them stood Audrey in a white linen dress, her hand resting flat against Grant's bare chest.

Beneath the photograph was a printed caption:

Kauai, July 18, 2020.

Willa had arrived three weeks early, on July 18.

Grant had called me from what he claimed was an airport gate in Phoenix. He told me the flight was full and he was on standby, trying everything he could to get home.

That first night, a nurse sat beside me and showed me how to keep Willa awake long enough to eat. Every time the hospital door opened, I looked up, expecting Grant.

He sent one message before midnight.

Still waiting for a seat.

When he finally appeared two days later with a bundle of pink carnations, I apologized to him. I thought he had spent two days sleeping in airport chairs while trying to reach us.

While I was learning how to feed our daughter alone, Grant had been carrying Audrey's son through the surf.

Audrey hadn't hidden the album.

She had given me the door code, told me to dust this desk, and left the photograph in plain sight.

Whatever Grant had told her, Audrey believed he belonged in this house.

I took out my phone.

I photographed Grant's face, the date beneath the picture, and Audrey's hand against his chest.

I closed the album and returned it beside the brass lamp, its spine parallel to the edge of the desk.

I checked the time on my phone.

It was eleven thirty-five. I had twenty-five minutes left. If I walked out now, I could bill only for the time I had finished. I needed every dollar of the four-hour minimum.

Willa's otter drawing was folded inside my canvas bag.

I put my phone back in my pocket, picked up my cleaning cloth, and finished dusting the bookshelves.

The primary bedroom was next on Audrey's list.

I read that line twice on her notepad.

Then I carried in the clean sheets.

I stripped the duvet from Audrey's king-sized bed and remade it with the fresh sheets from the bench.

I had made hundreds of beds for strangers without wondering who slept on which side.

That morning, I couldn't stop picturing Grant beneath these sheets while he told me he was in Salem.

Across the room, a slender gold bracelet lay on the glass tray beside Audrey's perfume bottles.

Light caught the small notch in the left corner of its gold bar.

I knew that notch.

I crossed the room and picked up the bracelet.

My mother had taken that bracelet off the week she entered hospice.

"Keep it for Willa," she had told me. "Give it to her when she's old enough to know where it came from."

It disappeared during our last move. I reopened every cardboard box and searched on my hands and knees until after midnight.

Grant had watched me from the doorway.

"You're so careless, Maren," he had said. "You probably tossed it with the bubble wrap."

Grant knew what the bracelet meant. After Mom died, I had told him I wanted Willa to wear it at her high school graduation.

For three years, I had believed him.

I turned the bracelet over.

Two letters were scratched faintly into the back of the gold bar:

R.C.

Ruth Calloway. My mother.

I laid the bracelet across my palm with the initials facing up, held my phone steady, and took one clear photo.

Then I laid the chain back on the glass tray, exactly where Audrey had left it.

Downstairs, a key turned in the front lock.

The entry panel began to chime.