Elaine spoke slowly. “Your father had been gone eleven months. I was behind on the house. Ruth was altering uniforms for the clinic where I cleaned.”
“Mom—”
“She paid what I owed. Then she brought me work I could do at home.”
Ruth rubbed the swollen joint of her thumb.
“We agreed that was private,” she said.
“I know. What happened?”
Megan ended the call.
The silence afterward was worse than anything Elaine could have said.
Robert looked at Ruth with a bewilderment that hurt her almost as much as his guilt.
“You never told me.”
“It wasn’t your business.”
“You helped her family all that time?”
“Her mother needed help.”
Megan’s face hardened again, as if shame were something she could defeat by refusing to recognize it.
“Well, you could help us now.”
Ruth stood.
“I already raised one of you. I welcomed the other. That was not permission to steal from me.”
Her voice shook on the last word.
Robert reached for the deed, then stopped himself.
“If you report this, I could lose everything.”
Ruth looked at the fingers hovering over her false signature.
For one terrible instant, she pictured him small enough to carry, asleep against her shoulder. Her body remembered the weight before her mind could refuse the memory.
“I need you both out tonight.”
“Mom.”
“Leave your keys.”
Megan pulled hers from her purse and dropped them beside the paper.
Robert took longer.
Ruth did not watch them leave. She kept her eyes on the keys until the door shut.
Then she sat down on the bottom stair, because it was the nearest place to sit, and cried with one hand pressed against her mouth.
Her phone rang twice before she answered.
“Ruth?” Elaine said. “Can I come?”
Ruth tried to say she was fine. The words would not form.
“Use the side door,” she whispered.
Elaine arrived with no questions ready. She found Ruth still on the stair and sat beside her, her coat unbuttoned, her knees cracking.
For several minutes they listened to the house.
“I paid your mortgage so your child could keep her bedroom,” Ruth finally said.
Elaine covered her face.
“I know.”
“I never thought that child would tell me to leave mine.”
Elaine stayed until morning. She washed the glasses while Ruth gathered the envelope, the rejected deed, and every accompanying page into a folder. Neither woman suggested forgetting what had happened.
