The girl still held the phone. Marion sat between the doorway her son had pointed her toward and the family she had given up her home to help.
Daniel reached across Marion for the phone. His sleeve brushed her cheek, and Sophie stumbled backward into the sideboard. A spoon struck the floor. Neither boy bent to pick it up.
“Put it down,” Daniel said.
Marion stood between them.
Her knees hurt. One hand needed the table. She stood anyway.
“Give me your father’s photograph.”
“You’re going to believe a child playing with recordings?”
“I heard you.”
His wife, Claire, laid her fork beside her plate. At last, she had stopped eating.
“Daniel,” she said. “Give her the picture.”
He looked at her with such naked surprise that Marion understood how thoroughly he had counted on her silence.
For a moment, his fingers tightened around the frame.
Then he pushed it against Marion’s chest. She caught it with both hands.
Sophie moved close enough for their shoulders to touch.
“I sent a copy to myself,” the girl said. “You can take my phone. It won’t change anything.”
Daniel’s mouth shifted into a smile Marion remembered from overdue notices and broken promises.
“Mama, sit down. We’ve all got upset.”
She looked at his chair, the dinner cooling beside it, the place where he expected the evening to resume.
“Where is my handbag?”
“Let’s talk first.”
“Where is it?”
The younger boy slid from his chair. He fetched it from the kitchen counter and brought it to her by both handles, carefully, as though something inside might spill.
Marion kissed his forehead.
None of the children should have been watching this.
She found her bank card, turned it over, and called the number on the back.
Daniel’s smile vanished.
“Mama. Don’t make a mess we can’t undo.”
The recorded greeting sounded unbearably cheerful. Marion pressed the wrong option, started again, and felt Sophie’s hand settle against her back.
When a person answered, Marion gave her name.
“I believe someone in my family intends to take money from my account.”
The words made it real in a way the recording had not.
Daniel pulled out a chair.
“Tell them you’re confused.”
Marion stepped away from him.
“I am not confused,” she told the woman on the telephone. “I need help making sure I’m the only person who can move my money.”
The bank employee asked questions. Marion answered slowly. Then the woman mentioned an electronic transfer initiated that afternoon.
Eight thousand dollars.
Marion looked toward the kitchen counter, where Daniel had offered to charge her phone while she finished the laundry.
“No,” she said. “I didn’t authorize that.”
Claire’s chair scraped backward.
