Chapter 14

Judith woke like a person who had driven the ugly corridor on purpose and wanted credit for it.

I was already at Gerald. Allie was already in the small room with the door pulled most of the way when the guest-room hinge complained. We had choreographed it in a whisper at five-thirty like criminals with a coffee maker. Allie’s hair still looked like the king. I had no solution for hair.

“That isn’t gas station,” Judith said, appearing in Mom’s old cardigan, which she had no business still wearing and every business still wearing. “Good. I was prepared to be disappointed in Florida as a concept.”

“Sit,” I said. “The chairs are new. They squeak so you’ll feel at home.”

She sat. She watched Allie come down the hall from the correct direction, which was the whole point of the five-thirty drill, and she watched Allie hesitate one beat too long before taking the mug that was not mine.

“You look like you slept in a dryer,” Judith told her.

“Humidity,” Allie said.

“That’s what we called it in 1998 too.” Judith cut the ruined coffee cake with the authority of a woman who had seen worse in Alabama. “Walk me around in the light. Last night I only learned you have a porch that wants a carpenter and a niece who answers questions like she’s on a stand.”

Allie shot me a look that said mommy. I shot her one that said toast is Thursday, lying is this morning.

Daylight was ruder than the porch bulb.

Judith stood in the small room and considered the hoodie on the hook, the cracked workshop book, the bed Allie had thrashed for eleven minutes so the pillow would have a story. She picked up the calendar, put it down when she hit July, and did not comment, which was its own comment.

“Desk is good,” she said. fourteen. You should have a door. I didn’t, and look how opinionated I got.”

In the primary she paused at the sliders, then at the nightstand.

“One charger.”

“I took mine to the kitchen,” I said, which was true in the way a will can be true and still leave out the week in Georgetown.

“Mm.” She opened the closet. My clothes. A gap where Allie’s had been. The gap was too clean. I could have left a shirt. I had been thorough like an idiot. “You always were neat when you were hiding something. Science fair. That thing with the neighbor’s cat. Don’t look at me like that. I’m talking about the cat.”

Allie, in the doorway, made a sound that wanted to be a laugh and came out as weather.

We took her to the hardware store because Judith believed a deadbolt was a love language.

The clerk called us you ladies and asked if we needed help finding anything besides a lock that would keep a college town on its own side of the frame. Judith held two bolts up like earrings.