"You should go to bed," Krista said finally.
"Shut up."
"Mom's going to be home soon."
"Good," I said. "Good. I want her to see it."
Krista didn't answer that. She just sat there, with her wet hands hanging between her knees, and she watched the front window, the one that looks out on the porch, the way a person watches for headlights.
My mother came home at nine-forty-one. I know because I was looking at the clock on the stove when the headlights swung across the front window, and I remember thinking that she was early, for once, and that it figured, that the one night I didn't want her to see the picture yet was the one night she'd be early, and then remembering that I did want her to see it. I wanted her to see all of it.
We heard the car door. We heard her on the porch, the heavy sound she makes coming up the steps at the end of a day, one foot and then the other on each step like a little kid, because her knees are shot. We heard her keys. Krista stood up on the stairs and then sat back down again.
The front door opens into the front room, and from the front room you can see straight through the archway into the dining room. My mother came in with her satchel over her shoulder and her headlamp still on, pushed up on her forehead, shining at the ceiling, and her reflective vest unzipped, and her hair coming out of its rubber band. She was saying "Girls, you will not believe what this dog did to Toomey on Pittsburgh Avenue—" and then she saw the dining room, and stopped.
I had imagined, kneeling there, what she would do. I had imagined it so many ways in the hour I'd been on the floor that it was almost like I'd already watched it happen. She would yell. She would yell at Krista in the voice she used about twice a year, the real voice, the one that comes up from the bottom of her and makes the windows feel thin. She'd say what is wrong with you and how could you and do you have any idea. Or else, I thought, she'd yell at me. I'd thought of that too, in the bad minutes. She'd say what did you do to make her this mad, or why'd you leave it out where anybody could get at it, or it's just a picture, Maren, she's your sister. I had prepared for both. I had prepared what I would say to both. I was ready.