Chapter 6 - He Stepped Past the Doorway
I told him no with my whole body before I said it with my mouth. I left my foot on the treadle and turned on the stool so my shoulder blocked the line from the kitchen to the bedroom door. The white fabric sat half-sewn under the needle. My right hand throbbed where the bandage pulled.
He stopped in the doorway. His shoes were too clean for our wood floors. I could hear the soft creak when he shifted his weight.
"You can't go in there," I said.
He didn't answer right away. He looked past me at the bed. I hated how still he went. The daylight from the bedroom window cut straight across the floorboards and hit the edge of the white bedding. Dust floated in it. Mom lay on her side under the light cover, her dark hair spread out on the pillow. Her breathing was shallow enough that I counted it without meaning to.
I stood up. The stool scraped. My legs felt shaky from sitting so long, but I got between the sewing machine and the bedroom door so I could guard both. If he reached for the fabric, I'd see it. If he moved toward her, I'd see that too.
"I was told not to come past the kitchen," he said quietly. His voice sounded different inside the house. Less flat.
"Then don't," I said.
He glanced down at me. His face was still serious, the way it had been at the front door when he handed me the envelope. The watch on his wrist caught the light. I saw the small tattoo on his hand when he loosened his fist. He wasn't holding anything now. The brown envelope was on the kitchen counter where I'd left it, still sealed.
Mom moved the cover a little with her fingers. Not waving him in. Just letting him know she was awake.
He took one step in.
Just one. His shoe crossed from the hallway wood onto the bedroom wood, over the strip where the white door had swung open. The floor popped under him. I stepped in after him before I thought about it, close enough to smell starch and car air freshener on his suit.
"You shouldn't," I whispered. "She's resting."
He didn't go to the bed. He stood there and looked, really looked. I watched his eyes move the way mine did when I cleaned: floor first, then bed, then window. The wood floors were worn near the bed where I walked every night. The white bedding was washed thin. The light cover didn't hide how small she looked underneath it. The window was cracked open an inch and the curtain didn't match the sheets. Everything was plain. There was nowhere to hide anything in that room.
Mom held his gaze. She didn't flinch or turn her face into the pillow. She just watched him back, steady, without fear. I had seen her look at the clinic nurse like that when the nurse said come back next week.
He swallowed. I saw his throat move.
"I didn't expect—" he started, then stopped.
I moved again, half a step sideways, so I was in his line of sight to her. My bandaged fingers curled by my side. The machine waited behind me in the kitchen, the needle up, the fabric ready to slip if the wind from the door touched it. I kept listening for both rooms at once — for his breathing here and for the hum I wasn't making there.
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He looked down at me, then back at Mom. Something in his shoulders dropped. He didn't sit, didn't touch the doorframe, didn't touch her. He just stood inside the boundary he'd been told not to cross and let the room show him what it was.
Mom blinked slowly. She didn't speak. She didn't have to. He was now a witness whether he wanted to be or not.
