Caleb stared. His lips moved, counting letters, counting the insult of a single digit. He had written a one in front of the two. The one was darker than the other figures, as if his hand had hesitated and then committed. He made a sound that was not quite a word.
“I thought the two was a twelve,” he said. “The line broke weird on the phone. Mom’s screen. There was a one from the page number in the corner and I—” He stopped, because explanations, in his house, sometimes made the error larger. “I checked it three times. I checked the wrong thing three times.”
“You checked a faithful copy of a mistake,” Emily said. “That can feel like checking.”
Denise took the printed sheet. She read it with her head slightly back, the posture of a woman who used reading glasses in private and did not intend to need them at a diner. Her mouth tightened, not at Emily now, but at the small treachery of type and glare. She put the sheet down.
“Remainder twelve,” she said. “With a divisor of seven. That isn’t even possible, is it.”