"Can I see?"
She looked at me as if I'd asked to see her tax returns. Then she shrugged, a tight little lift of the shoulders, and led me down.
It was a finished basement, carpeted, with a sectional couch facing a big television that I'd guess hadn't been turned on in a while. And across the whole back half of it, there were drying racks. Five of them. The folding wooden kind, and two metal ones, and a retractable clothesline strung between two support poles, and on them hung towels and sheets and blouses and dish rags and a gray wool skirt and a single navy blazer that I recognized from that morning's wardrobe rotation. Against the wall was the washer, a big front-loader with a crack in the gasket, and the dryer beside it with a strip of masking tape across the door on which someone had written in Sharpie: DO NOT USE — NO HEAT.
"I thought she was using the racks," Ottoline said. "For her things. I thought she was hanging them in her room. She has a rack in her closet. I bought it for her in August. I thought..." She laughed, a sound with no bottom to it. "I thought, look how responsible she is. She's taking care of her own laundry so I don't have to. I thought that, Sela. I was proud of her for it."
I sat down on the arm of the sectional. She stayed standing, among the racks, among the hanging sheets, like a woman in a forest.
"Hesper told me about your job," I said. "Before you hear it from her. She knows. She's known since June, I think. She followed you to the Panera."
Ottoline closed her eyes. She stood very still. The sheet beside her stirred slightly in the breeze of the dehumidifier.
"Of course she did," she said. "Of course she did. She's my daughter."