Chapter 8 - The Shelf Behind the Folded Sheets
I learned where Evelyn kept the key on a Tuesday, because laundry day smelled like hot cotton and the upstairs hall got too warm to breathe in.
She'd left me on the bench by the hallway after pantry work. Milo was still downstairs shelling something into a metal bowl, and I could hear the clink of it through the floor. Evelyn told me to sit and be still and don't touch the wall. She didn't look at the tear when she said it. She never looked straight at it anymore.
"Stay," she said. That was all.
I stayed for maybe ten minutes. My feet didn't reach the floor from the bench. I swung them a little, then stopped because the sound of my shoes bothered me. Upstairs the washer thumped to a stop, and a second later I heard her footsteps cross overhead, quick and annoyed like she was behind on something.
Then she came down the back stairs with a laundry basket on her hip. She'd changed. The maroon dress was gone and she wore a pale robe tied tight at the waist, her pulled-back hair a little looser with damp at the temples. I'd never seen her without the dress on during the day. It made her look smaller in the shoulders, more like a person.
She saw me staring and frowned. "What?"
"Nothing," I said fast.
She set the basket down by the linen closet two doors past the double doors. That closet was narrow and tall with slatted doors that never shut right. Inside it smelled like soap and old wood. The shelves were stacked with white sheets folded so sharp the edges could cut.
Evelyn didn't like me following, but I got up from the bench and stood in the doorway where she could see me. That was safer than hiding. If she could see me, she didn't worry about what I was doing.
She pulled warm sheets from the basket and started refolding them on the shelf at her chest level. Her hands moved fast. Fold, smooth, stack. Fold, smooth, stack. Sweat stood along her upper lip from the heat coming up the stairwell.
I watched her hands because Milo told me to always watch hands, not faces. Faces lie easier.
When she reached for the last pillowcase, the robe pocket gaped open. Something brass caught the low hall light.
It was a small key, dull except along the edge where fingers had worn it bright. She must have felt my eyes stop because her hand went to her pocket right away. She didn't take the key out. She pressed her palm flat over it through the robe.
"You watch too much," she said.
I looked down at my shoes.
She went back to folding. Then the phone rang downstairs, one of those old wall phones with a bell that sounded angry. She went still. It rang again.
She glanced at me, then at the basket, then toward the stairs. "Don't move," she said.
She left the basket and went down. I heard her pick up on the third ring. "Hello?" Her voice went low and polite in a way she never used with us.
I stood in the linen closet doorway and counted her words. I got to seven before I stepped forward.
The sheets were still warm. I could feel the heat coming off the stack. On the middle shelf, behind where she'd been folding, there was a gap between two piles just wide enough for a hand. I didn't touch anything at first. I just looked.
She came back up faster than I expected. I stepped back to the doorway before her head cleared the stairs. My heart hit so hard I thought she would hear it.
She didn't say anything about the phone. She went straight to the closet and reached into her robe pocket. She pulled out the brass key. For a second I thought she'd put it back in her pocket, but instead she lifted the top folded sheet on the left stack and slid the key underneath it, flat against the wood shelf.
She patted the sheet down twice. Then she closed the slatted doors and tested them with her fingertips to make sure they caught.
"Come on," she said to me. "You've got dust on your shirt."
I followed her to her room. She told me to wait in the hall while she changed. The door stayed cracked open three inches. I stared at the strip of carpet and listened to fabric move. When she came out, the maroon dress was back on, zipped and smooth, her hair pulled tight again. The robe was gone over her arm to the hamper.
She looked tall again. In control again.
"You stayed put," she said. "Good."
I nodded. My hand wanted to shake and I put it in my pocket to stop it. I knew exactly where the key was now, under the white sheet on the left, middle shelf, behind the slatted doors that didn't shut right. I could see it in my head clear as anything.
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I didn't take it. She'd just counted the folds with her own hands. If it went missing now, she'd know it was me standing in that doorway. Milo wasn't upstairs to run interference. There was nowhere to hide it on me without her patting my shirt down like she always did.
Later, I told myself. When she wasn't thinking about laundry at all.
