"I'd like to think so too," Leti said. "And if you did believe me, Bryony loses her Gran. That's the other thing. Whatever your mother is to me, she's the one who did the bathroom floor. I wasn't going to be the woman who took that from her. Not for twenty thousand dollars and not for anything." She drew her knees up tighter. "And you said your girls tonight. Downstairs. My kid and your girls. You've been saying it for three years. You don't hear it. They do."
He had nothing to answer. He sat there with it. After a while she reached over and turned off the lamp on her side, and lay down, and turned toward the wall the way she always did, and then, after a minute, she turned back and lay on her other side and faced the open door instead, and he did not know what that cost her, and he lay down beside her on top of the covers in his clothes and did not sleep, and neither did she.
On Tuesday morning at six he was in the kitchen when Itzel came down in a hoodie with her keys in her hand, and he understood for the first time why her car keys were always on the hook by the door at night, and Bryony's saxophone case was always waiting beside them on Monday evenings, propped against the wall.
"You drive her," he said.
Itzel stopped. She looked at the saxophone case and at him. "Tuesdays. Jazz band's at six-fifteen. It's on the way to open gym." She shrugged one shoulder. "It's not a big deal."
"I thought Tovah's mom took her."
"Tovah quit jazz band in like September." Itzel picked up the case. "She doesn't really talk to me in the car. She does her reeds. You know, the little thing where she wets them. It's kind of gross." She hesitated at the door. "Is everything okay? Mom was weird this morning. She made eggs. She never makes eggs on a Tuesday."
Upstairs, a door opened, and Bryony came down with her hair still wet and her backpack over one shoulder, saw her father at the table, and stopped on the bottom step.
"Go on," Barrett said. "I'll see you both tonight."
He watched them go from the front window. The Civic backed down the driveway with its lights on in the dark, carefully, checking both ways twice the way he had taught her in the Towne East lot, and he could see the two shapes in the front seat, not talking, one bent over something in her lap. The car went to the end of Larkspur Court and its turn signal came on, though there was no one else on the street at all, and then it was gone.