"You don't have to tonight," Lucy said.
Paige nodded slowly. She turned the envelope over, and back. Then she slid it into the pocket of the green coat, the right-hand pocket, the one where Lucy kept the cough drop in its wax paper twist. She pushed it all the way down.
"It can stay there," she said. "For now. Is that okay? Until I'm ready."
Lucy thought about it. She thought about the coat on her bed every night since January, and the collar she rationed, once a day. She thought about the hook, and the hands that could reach it.
"Yeah," she said. "It can stay there."
Paige wiped her face with the back of her wrist. She looked at the glass door, at the slow snow, at the streetlight.
"Her lemons," she said. "The greenhouse. Is it still there?"
"Grandma kept the house," Lucy said. "She didn't sell it yet. I don't think she can."
"Are there still lemons?"
"I don't know," Lucy said. "Nobody's been out there since January."
Paige was quiet for a moment.
"Maybe in two weeks," she said. "When she comes. Maybe we could ask."
She didn't wait for an answer. She turned and went back through the kitchen, past her mother at the island, who looked up at her and opened her mouth and then closed it again, and up the stairs, and Lucy heard her door close, softly this time, without a slam.
Lucy stayed in the mudroom a little longer. She bent down and picked up the beige jacket off the floor, and shook it out, and hung it on the first hook, by the door, where anybody could take it. Then she got down on her knees and reached under the boot tray and felt around until her fingers found the pencil. She set it on the bench.
Then she stood in front of the green coat for a while, not touching it, and watched the snow come down, and did not cry, and did not forgive anyone, and listened to the house be quiet around her, and to the sound, out in the driveway, of her father finally turning on the wipers.