Derek put the page on his knee. He thought of Lauren at nineteen, milk-sore, writing into a notebook her mother had bought for a future that did not include this paragraph. He thought of her at the wedding, holding Ruth in the kitchen. He thought of her on the curb in the camel coat, saying he heard it wrong. The girl and the woman were the same person. That was the part that would not let him simplify the day into a villain and a door.
The statement showed fourteen thousand and a few hundred, then a debit for the airline, then a balance that was still, by the standards of their house, a large secret. Ruth’s note was clipped to the back, the handwriting shaky. For Jonah’s schooling, or his start. Lauren will know.
“She knew,” he said to the basement. No one answered. The washer clicked and settled.
He carried the papers up and set them on the table. Lauren was still there. Jonah had gone back to the steps, giving them the room, smoke from a cigarette Derek had not said he could have drifting under the porch light. Derek let the cigarette go. There were bigger fires.
“I’m not taking any of this,” he said. “It isn’t mine. It isn’t yours either, not really. You’ll tell him tonight what’s in the account. Not on a plane. Here, or tomorrow morning, in a voice. He can decide with Claire what Howard needs and what school means at twenty. If he wants to blow it on a truck, that’s his mistake to make. We are not going to be another set of adults who schedule his life for his own good.”
Lauren’s eyes filled and she blinked hard. “All right.”