Mrs. Chen nodded. She had lived above families long enough to know the sound of a Thursday that had become a different week. She went back upstairs. The television came on. Ana was grateful for the laugh track. It filled the townhouse with a crowd that was not asking questions.
She washed the dinner dish from last night. She wiped the island. She picked up the cap from the counter and the smell of the band made her sit on the floor. She sat until her legs hurt. She put the cap in a grocery bag. She put the bag by the door. Diego would have to decide if the bag went in the trash or in Eric’s hand. She would not carry it to the building. She was done carrying things to the building.
Diego came home at six-ten. Lila was at the table with crayons. Ana was at the stove with pasta she did not want. The grocery bag sat by the door like a small animal.
Lila said, “Dad, the wheel.”
He had forgotten the truck. He sat on the sectional and finished the wheel because a child is not a courtroom and a truck is allowed to be finished. Lila cheered. He felt the cheer in his teeth.
After her bath, after two books, after the cracked door, they stood in the kitchen again.
Ana said, “His name is Eric. He works upstairs. It started as coffee. I let it become more than coffee. He has been here. Not at night. Afternoons. I thought I could keep it out of this room. I was wrong. I am not going to ask you to feel sorry for me.”
Diego listened to the whole of it now because Lila was asleep and the first law of the scene had already been honored the night before. The mother had not explained while the fob was in the air. Now the fob was in a bag and the explanation was just words on a Thursday that had become Friday in the body.
“Do you love him.”
“No.”
“Then why.”
Ana looked at the pasta water still in the pot, a film on the surface.
“Because I liked being a person who got chosen in the middle of the day. That is the ugliest sentence I have. It is the true one.”
Diego’s hands were on the back of a chair.
“The driveway,” he said.
“Yes.”
“She waved.”
“Yes.”
“You told her neighbor.”