Peter arrived that afternoon carrying groceries and another assisted-living brochure. He had chosen a residence with pleasant gardens and a shuttle to downtown. He placed the pamphlet beside Eleanor's teacup and announced he could arrange a visit on Tuesday.
“Where did you put the cash from the credit union?” she asked.
Peter's smile lingered half a second too long. “In your wallet. Remember?”
“The teller handed it to you in an envelope.”
“Then I put it in your wallet.”
Eleanor described the security video and Officer Marsh's questions. Peter shrugged. “Police cameras don't see everything.” He said the boy might have passed the wallet to a friend, although the recording showed no such movement. When Eleanor pointed that out, Peter became irritated.
“You've been forgetting things, Aunt Eleanor. That's what worries me.”
The word forgetting settled between them. Peter had begun using it in almost every disagreement. When she could not locate a bill, he called her forgetful. When she recalled that she had declined a medical appointment he arranged without asking, he called her confused. Eleanor thought of the cash envelope he had carried from the bank and the way her hand shook whenever he questioned her memory.
She asked him to leave the groceries and go. He complied, but not before reminding her that he paid her insurance bills and knew the passwords she could never remember. Once he was gone, Eleanor sat at the table and opened her old household ledger.
The ledger was a red clothbound notebook. For years she had written down cash purchases, repairs, and utility payments in a small square hand. After her husband died, she continued from habit. She had marked the four-hundred-dollar withdrawal beside an estimate for front steps. But several recent entries had unfamiliar abbreviations, all written with Peter's blue pen.
She called the handyman, who said he had never been paid and was still waiting to schedule work. Eleanor had not ordered him to cancel. He read aloud a text he had received from Peter's number: “Mrs. Whitcomb no longer authorizes the repair.”
There were signs Eleanor had chosen not to notice. Peter had begun opening her mail before she asked. He wrote appointments on the calendar in ink and then told her she had forgotten requesting them. When she questioned a charge, he produced a stack of paperwork so thick she felt tired before she began reading. He was sometimes tender afterward, making tea and apologizing for sounding harsh. Eleanor remembered these moments now with a bewildering mix of gratitude and alarm. The room stayed quiet.
The steps outside Eleanor's house had been dangerous for months. She gripped the red notebook and began turning backward through its pages.