Three wet towels on the floor.
Crushed crackers under a chair.
Someone had left half a banana on the windowsill.
June opened the curtains.
Snow covered downtown Ottawa in gray-white light.
Her coworker Marisol pushed the cart inside.
“You look terrible.”
June smiled.
“You always know what to say.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
Marisol was fifty-eight, from Peru originally, and had worked beside June for nineteen years.
She noticed everything.
By nine thirty, June had told her most of what happened.
Not the money.
Not yet.
Just the quilt.
Marisol stopped tucking a sheet.
“She called it flea-market?”
“Yes.”
“And Ethan?”
“Said nothing.”
Marisol smoothed the corner violently.
“I would have taken the champagne and poured it over both of them.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“I would think about it very beautifully.”
June laughed.
That helped.
Marisol looked at her.
“What are you going to do?”
“Go to work.”
“I mean about them.”
June adjusted a pillow.
“I don’t know.”
Marisol watched her.
Then said, “Good.”
June frowned.
“What?”
“You always know too fast.”
“I do not.”
