She drank the water. On the table, half under the chicken towel, was a brochure she almost missed. Memory care. Not a facility in Linden. One in Dayton, with a photograph of a woman laughing at a puzzle. Someone had written, in Arthur's hand, No, across the laughing woman. The no was underlined. The pen had torn the paper a little on the second stroke.
Ruth put the brochure back exactly where it had been. Her face was hot. She did not know who had brought the brochure into the house. She knew who had written the no. She stood a minute longer, as if the minute might produce a version of herself who could go upstairs without becoming a prosecutor, and then she went upstairs and lay awake anyway, trying the case.
In the morning Caleb made oatmeal. He put raisins in Arthur's and not in Ruth's because he remembered, and the remembering was another thing she did not know how to hold. Arthur came to the table in the blue shirt, buttoned correctly today. He looked as if he had slept. He looked as if he had not. Both were plausible.
"No bank," he said. "No because. Eggs would have been fine, Caleb. You don't have to perform porridge."
"It's what was open," Caleb said.
Ruth ate. The oatmeal was good. She hated that it was good.
"I saw the brochure," she said.
Arthur did not look up. "Then you saw the no."
"Who brought it."