She stood in the front doorway with her arms folded across her chest, shoulders square, chin lifted in that hard little angle she used whenever she wanted to sound righteous instead of cruel. Behind her, almost artfully arranged, were my younger sister Kendra and Kendra’s husband, Mark. They wore matching expressions—soft-eyed, solemn, fake-compassionate. The kind of faces people practice when they want to do something ugly while still feeling like good people.
“Be out by tomorrow,” my mother, Linda Dawson, said. “I’ve let this go on long enough.”
I stood in the hallway with a grocery bag in one hand and my keys in the other and looked past all three of them into the living room. Dad’s chair sat where it had always sat, near the lamp by the window. The old mantel clock ticked over the fireplace. The rug I vacuumed every Saturday after his radiation treatments lay perfectly straight because I had fixed the corner that morning before going to the store.
For a moment, all I could hear was that clock.
Not my mother’s voice.
Not Kendra shifting her weight dramatically like this was painful for her too.
Not Mark clearing his throat in fake support.
Just that clock.
