Twenty minutes later, we stopped outside Patricia’s house.
Her porch light was off. Only a window at the neighboring house glowed faintly.
“Are we really doing this?” I whispered.
“She used our emergency key to walk in on you,” he said. “I still have the one she gave me years ago.”
Until then, I’d assumed Nathan had brought me there so we could confront her.
I was wrong.
He slipped the emergency key into the lock and quietly opened the door.
I stepped inside behind him.
And froze.
The entry table was coated in a soft gray layer of dust.
Shoes lay overturned near the wall.
A sour smell drifted from the kitchen, where dishes were stacked higher than the faucet and a dirty towel lay crumpled on the floor.
For eight years, I’d been trying to meet standards Patricia couldn’t meet herself.
“Nathan, look at this place.”
“It’s worse than I remembered,” he murmured. “Keep going.”
Then his list came back to me.
***Fridge. Cabinets. Laundry. Towels.***
I looked at him.
He hadn’t brought me there on impulse.
He had been planning this for days.
We quietly moved down the hallway.
At Patricia’s bedroom, Nathan glanced at me and switched on the light.
It hit her directly in the face.
She jerked upright, hair sticking straight up on one side, eyes swollen with sleep.
“What,” she gasped. “What are you doing here?”
Nathan raised his phone.
Patricia froze.
“Nathan. Don’t.”
He didn’t take a picture.
He merely kept the phone pointed toward her.
“Why not?” he asked. “You thought it was fine when Claire asked you the same thing.”
Patricia pulled the blanket toward her chin.
“Put that away.”
“Almost five in the morning, Mom. Claire’s already awake, and you’re still lying in bed. Imagine what your Facebook friends would say.”
“That’s not funny.”
“No,” Nathan said. “It isn’t.”
Neither of them moved.
Then Nathan lowered his phone.
“Now you understand.”
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