Seven Checks Left Untouched in a Cedar Desk Drawer

“A different house,” Rosie said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Our own house.”

I thought of the slip of paper in my apron pocket and the numbers written in blue ink.

“Did Ben tell you where he got the money for a house, Rosie?” I asked.

She pulled her hand back, tucking it under her thigh as she looked toward the hallway.

The sound of my mother’s heels clicked on the hardwood floor as she entered the kitchen.

“Cathy, your father needs the mail from the porch,” Margaret said, her voice perfectly level.

I got up and walked out to the front porch, the cold air hitting my face.

The mailbox was empty, but on the porch swing sat Ben’s small leather notebook, left behind from the evening before.

I picked it up, the leather worn and scuffed at the corners.

The first page contained a list of lumber prices, but the second page had a single name written at the top.

Willow Grove.

I closed the notebook and stepped back into the house, the hallway dark and silent.

Upstairs, the clock in the hall struck nine as I turned off my bedside lamp.

The floorboards creaked downstairs as my parents moved from the dining room to the study.

I lay in the dark, my eyes open, listening to the low, rhythmic murmur of their voices through the floorboards.

My father’s deep register rose and fell, followed by the quiet, clipped tone of my mother’s reply.

I turned the silver ring on my finger, the metal cold against my skin.

The murmuring continued, steady and distant, like water running behind a wall.

I turned onto my side, staring at the window, realizing my place in the house had shifted.

By ten o’clock the next morning, the sun was high enough to bake the damp autumn leaves on the pavement outside my father’s office. I carried his brown paper lunch bag up the narrow carpeted stairs, my boots making no sound on the worn green wool. The buttered bread inside had already left a small, translucent circle near the bottom of the bag, smelling faintly of roast beef and horseradish.

Miss Gable, his secretary, was not at her mahogany desk in the outer waiting room. Her typewriter sat silent under its gray plastic cover, and a half-empty cup of tea was still steaming on her green felt blotter.

The door to my father’s inner office was half-open, showing a sliver of the mahogany-paneled walls. I pushed it open with my shoulder, expecting to see him dictating some corporate filing to his machine.