“Clean them before you leave.”
Claire dropped her muddy heels on the kitchen floor and pushed them toward me with the toe of her slipper.
She didn’t look at me.
It was shortly after eight on a cold October morning, the kind of morning when Boston autumn stops being beautiful and starts to feel like an omen. It had rained overnight, making the brick sidewalks slippery and maple leaves pressed against the curb.
I stood by the stove, spatula in hand.
Two eggs crackled in the cast-iron skillet Margaret had bought at a thrift store in 1987. Morning light filtered through the bay window and spread across the hardwood floors I’d laid myself before Daniel was old enough to drive.
The room smelled of butter, burnt toast, and long-unspoken resentment.
Claire was wearing a champagne-colored robe, her hair casually tied back. Her phone was already pointed at the bowl of white roses she’d placed next to the sink.
Nearly two hundred thousand followers watched her create what she called a thoughtfully designed home.
They saw candles, linen napkins, soft music, and the soft morning light.
They’ve never seen me prepare breakfast before dawn.
“My shoes are so dirty,” she said. “We’ll meet at eleven.”
I put the spatula down next to the stove.
“I heard you.”
Only then did she look up from her phone.
“Then why are you standing there?”
A certain anger comes thunderously. It burns the face, stiffens the shoulders, and demands immediate action.
What I sensed was colder.
It had developed over the course of two years and eleven months, ever since Daniel and Claire moved into the Beacon Hill house after Margaret’s death and told me I shouldn’t live alone.
At first, I thought they’d come to help me.
Then the guest room became theirs.
The back study became Claire’s recording room.
