let you in. I just kept rubbing my neck and saying give her room. I said it to June about you. I said it to you about June. I made both of you give each other room till there wasn't any room left for anybody."
"I'm not asking you to let her go," said Carla. "I've never asked you that. God help me, I couldn't compete with her if I tried, and I tried. I'm asking you to let me in the room where she is. That's all. Just tell me what's in the room."
"I know."
"And don't you dare," said Carla, and now her voice did break, just a little, on the dare, "don't you dare take this from me by making it your fault. I put it in the box. Me. I went in her room and took it off her bed, and I knew she'd hate me for it, and I did it anyway, because I wanted to win. That's mine. You don't get to carry it. You carry the part that's yours."
"All right," Dad said. "All right. The glove box is mine."
"The glove box is yours."
Then nothing for a while. And then a sound I didn't recognize at first, a low, muffled, ragged sound, and I lay there on my bare bed staring at the ceiling for a long moment before I understood it was my father, crying, in the kitchen, and that Carla was holding him while he did it. I had never heard him cry. Not at the hospital. Not at the funeral. Not at Grandma Ivy's bedside. Not once in seven years.
I put my pillow over the register. Not to stop hearing. Just so they could have it.
* * *
In the morning, Carla called in sick. I found out later it was the first day she'd missed at Baptist Health in six years. She called the realtor too and told her the closing in Lexington might need to move a week, and the realtor said something sharp enough that I heard it from the stairs, and Carla said, "Then it'll need to move a week, Brenda," and hung up.
She knocked on my door at eight. Not the quick double knock she used on school days. One knock, and then she waited.
"Come in."
She stood in the doorway in her bathrobe with two mugs of coffee. She'd never brought me coffee before. She'd never, in three years, let me drink coffee on a weekday, because she said it was bad for my sleep. She held one out, and I took it.