Chương 1
""The third time the alarm panel flashed red, I stopped punching in the code and looked through the narrow glass beside my own front door at my daughter-in-law walking toward me in my white linen shirt.
For a few seconds, I honestly believed the keypad was malfunctioning.
The house had been mine for twenty-two years, and 0417 had been the code since Harold chose it because April seventeenth was the day we signed the mortgage papers.
I tried it once slowly, then again with my glasses on, and finally pressed my thumb against the cool plastic as if sixty-nine-year-old fingers might somehow be the problem.
Lauren opened the door before I could try a fourth time.
She had bare feet, wet hair, and a sweating glass of something pale in one hand.
My linen shirt hung open over her green swimsuit.
I recognized a faint rust-colored mark near the bottom button from the summer Harold spilled iced tea on me and insisted club soda could fix anything.
“Oh,” Lauren said.
Not hello.
Not what are you doing here.
Just oh.
I looked from her face to the keypad.
“The alarm won't take my code.”
“We changed it.”
Behind me, the paper grocery bag balanced against my hip began to tear.
A jar of pickles shifted somewhere near the bottom.
“You changed it?”
“We needed something easier to remember.”
I waited for her to tell me the new number.
Instead, she took a sip from her glass.
Through the open doorway I could see enough of the living room to know that something else had changed.
The blue couch Harold and I bought in Pensacola was still there, but somebody had buried it under cream-colored pillows.
Two brass candlesticks stood on the coffee table where I usually kept a wooden bowl full of shells.
The bowl was gone.
So was the framed photograph of Harold holding a pompano like he had personally invented fishing.
In its place stood a photograph of Lauren's parents and her younger sister on a ski trip.
I shifted the grocery bag higher.
“Well, give me the new code before these pickles end up in the driveway.”
Lauren didn't smile.
“Patricia, maybe we should talk first.”
There are sentences that sound harmless until you hear them at the wrong door.
I set the groceries down.
The second bag contained hamburger buns, tomatoes, corn, potato salad, and the lemon cookies Marcus liked when he was a boy.
I had driven almost four hours with those groceries because Marcus had called Sunday and said they might grill that weekend.
Apparently I had mistaken might for an invitation.
“What do we need to talk about?”
Lauren glanced over her shoulder.
“Marcus?”
My son appeared at the end of the hallway wearing shorts and an old University of Florida T-shirt.
He stopped when he saw me.
His eyes went first to my face, then to the groceries, then to the alarm panel.
That small sequence told me he already knew.
“Hey, Mom.”
“What's the new code?”
He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Lauren and I were going to call you.”
“When?”
Neither of them answered.
A golf cart rattled past on the road behind me, and somebody's little dog barked furiously at nothing.
I could hear the Gulf beyond the dunes, steady and indifferent.
Lauren folded one arm across herself.
“We've been talking about boundaries.”
I looked at Marcus.
He studied the floor.
“Boundaries,” I repeated.
“We've basically been living here for months now,” Lauren said.
“Your condo repairs were supposed to take three weeks.”
“That wasn't our fault.”
“I didn't say it was.”
“The contractor found mold.”
“I know.”
“And then the insurance company delayed everything.”
“I know that too.”
Her mouth tightened because agreement had apparently inconvenienced the argument she had prepared.
Marcus finally stepped closer.
“Mom, nobody's trying to make this a thing.”
“Then give me the code.”
He looked at Lauren.
I saw it happen.
My forty-one-year-old son looked at his wife for permission to give his mother the alarm code to his mother's house.
Something inside me became very quiet.
Lauren exhaled through her nose.
“Patricia, you have a habit of coming down without checking.”
“I own the house.”
“And we're living here.”
“Temporarily.”
“That's exactly the attitude I'm talking about.”
The jar of pickles settled against the paper bag with a soft clunk.
I almost laughed.
Instead, I picked up both bags.
“Move, please.”
Lauren remained in the doorway.
“You can visit.”
My fingers tightened around the handles.
“I'm sorry?”
“You can absolutely visit, but we need you to clear it with us first.”
Marcus said her name softly.
“Lauren.”
“No, because we keep avoiding this.”
She looked directly at me now.
“If we're going to treat this like our home, we need some privacy and basic respect.”
The strange part was that she sounded reasonable.
Had I been standing at somebody else's door, I might even have agreed with her.
I looked down at the threshold Harold had replaced twice because the salt air kept eating through everything we bought.
“You're asking me to get permission to enter my own house.”
“I'm asking you to respect that we're occupying it.”
“Lauren, don't use occupying like you're the British army.”
Marcus made a noise that might have been a laugh before catching himself.
Lauren turned toward him.
“Seriously?”
“Sorry.”
He wasn't sorry.
For half a second, he was twelve again, trying not to laugh when Harold said something inappropriate at church.
Then his face closed.
That hurt worse.
Lauren looked back at me.
“We're not trying to exclude you.”
“You changed the lock code.”
“The alarm code.”
“Thank you for the distinction.”
“We haven't changed the locks.”
“That's comforting.”
“Mom,” Marcus said, “can we just talk about this tomorrow?”
I looked at him.
He couldn't hold my eyes for more than a second.
“Did you know she was changing the code?”
His silence lasted too long.
“Marcus.”
May you like
“Yes.”
The word was almost lost beneath the wind.
