Chapter 12
We were still standing in the same place we had been for what felt like hours. The living room with the hardwood floor and the staircase behind me. My dad had just gotten Tara to agree that I could stay while we checked her own pockets and her bag. Nobody had moved yet. I hadn't taken my sweater off and my hands were cold inside the sleeves.
My dad looked at Tara. He didn't reach for anything himself.
"Tara," he said, quiet. "Will you empty the coat pockets yourself? And the side pockets in the purse. While Maya watches."
Tara's mouth tightened. She glanced at the entryway where her coat hung by the front door. It was a black wool coat, long, on the hook next to the keys. Her purse was on the console underneath it, the black leather one she always kept zipped.
"You want me to dump my own things out," she said.
"I want it to be clear," my dad said. "If you do it, nobody can say it was planted."
I stood near the arm of the couch and nodded once because he looked at me. I didn't say anything. My throat still hurt from trying not to cry.
Tara walked to the entryway. Her heels made a sharp sound on the hardwood even though she was trying to walk soft. I followed a few steps behind my dad but I stopped at the edge of the rug so I wasn't crowding her. The pendant light over the entry threw a warm circle down onto the console.
She started with the coat. She didn't take it off the hook. She just slipped her hand into the right pocket and pulled it inside out a little.
Keys first. Her house keys and car fob came out with a jingle and she set them on the console. Then a crumpled receipt. Then a lip balm. Her hand paused.
She reached into the left pocket. Her fingers caught on something.
I watched her brow pull together. She didn't look at us. She pulled out a small folded stack, cream and green, pressed flat together the way bills get when they've been in a pocket for a while.
It was folded in half, then half again. I recognized the fold because I'd seen Tara fold money that way at the kitchen counter before.
She stared at it in her palm.
My dad didn't move. His watch caught the light.
Tara unfolded it slowly. One bill. Then another. Then a third. A ten and two twenties. Fifty dollars.
The keys were right next to it on the console. The bills had been tucked down beside them, deep in the lining of the pocket.
She didn't say anything right away. She turned the bills over once, like she was checking if they were hers.
"Tara," my dad said, his voice even.
"I... I put them there," she said, very quietly. "When I came in from the store."
She looked up at us then. Her eyes went to me first, then quickly to my dad. Her face had gone pale under her makeup. Her serious expression from before was gone.
"I must have slipped it in my coat when my hands were full," she said. "I thought I put it back in my purse."
No one answered for a second. The house was so quiet I could hear the heat clicking on. The hardwood floor felt cold through my socks. I kept my hands tucked into my sweater sleeves and I didn't move closer.
My dad reached out, not for the money, but he rested his hand lightly on the console, near the keys, like he needed a second.
"So it was with your things all along," he said. Not loud. Not angry. Just clear.
Tara nodded. Her bob swung forward and she didn't push it back. She was holding the folded bills too tight and the edge crinkled.
"I didn't check the coat," she said. She looked at me again. "Maya."
I swallowed. I wanted to say something but I didn't know what would be right. I wasn't going to shout or say I told you so. I just felt my chest loosen all at once and my eyes started to sting again, but different this time.
My dad looked at me then at Tara.
"You see where it was," he said to her.
May you like
She kept nodding. The money was still in her hand, right next to her keys, where it had been the whole time we were standing in the living room arguing about me.
We all stood there in the entryway, the three of us around that little console, looking at the same fifty dollars. Nobody picked it up to put it back. The silence just sat there until it was clear what it meant.
