That was the arithmetic she had been doing for three years. It always came out the same.
"Junie?"
Brooke was standing in the doorway. She was holding her phone against her chest with both hands, and her face was blotchy, and Junie understood that Brooke had been home the whole time. Upstairs. Quiet. The way she always was.
"I saw her," Brooke said. Her voice shook. "I was getting juice. I saw her carry it in here. She didn't think anybody was—she thought I had my headphones on."
Junie looked at her.
"I didn't stop her." Brooke's eyes filled up. "I'm sorry. I didn't—I just stood there. I'm sorry."
"It's okay."
"It's not." Brooke wiped her face with the back of her wrist, hard, like she was angry at it. "It's not okay. It's the meanest thing I ever saw anybody do."
They were quiet for a moment. The dryer ticked as it cooled.
"I took a picture," Brooke said. "After she left. Before you got home. Of the sink with the bucket and everything. I don't know why. I just thought—somebody should."
She turned the phone around. It was the sink, the cloudy water, the green still faintly visible under the surface like something drowning, the bucket, the two jugs of Clorox on the dryer, and on the corner of the frame, the edge of Dana's coffee cup with her lipstick on the rim.
Junie stared at it. And then, because she didn't know what else to do, and because Brooke was standing there in her big hand-me-down sweatshirt looking like she might break into pieces, she held out her free arm, and Brooke came and sat down next to her on the floor, and Junie put the arm around her, and that was when Junie finally started to cry.
* * *
Mark Hale was forty feet in the air when his phone buzzed for the third time in his chest pocket, and he ignored it, because you ignore everything when your hands are on a primary line.