The phone calls he took in the garage. 'My attorney,' he'd said once, and laughed. 'Boring stuff.'
Last October, at my mother's house, him kneeling in the attic asking, casual as anything, 'Hey, do you know where your grandma's old land papers ended up?'
He mentioned a late meeting Thursday.
Every memory turned inside out.
At 4 a.m., I was at the kitchen table with a cold mug of tea I couldn't remember making. I whispered it to the empty room.
'I have to figure out what he's doing before he does it to me.'
****
The next morning I made Nathan pancakes and smiled like a woman who hadn't sat awake all night rehearsing his voice on that phone call. He kissed my forehead and mentioned a late meeting Thursday. I nodded and poured his coffee.
He was hiding it somewhere else.
The second his car left the driveway, I opened my laptop.
