Monday. Two-forty in the afternoon. Your mother has taken Charlotte to a children's museum downtown because your mother wanted a full day with Charlotte and your father said the museum was good and Karen was at work. The house has you in it and a washing machine two rooms over running on its second cycle and your father in the garage with his sander whose sound carries through two walls and a yard at the specific pitch that says a man does not want company.
The basket of clean laundry from the first cycle sits on the bed in the guest room. Half of it is Charlotte's, half of it is yours. Your mother folded Charlotte's already and left your pile for you. You are alone in the guest room. You close the door.
You pick up a T-shirt from the basket. One of yours, the navy one you have had since NYU orientation. You fold it the way hands fold shirts.
Your hands are folding too hard.
You slow your hands down. The T-shirt goes on the stack and the stack is uneven because the T-shirt went on too hard. Your shoulders are up at your ears. You had not noticed. You pick up the next shirt. Your hands fold it. The stack is still uneven. Your jaw works once. Then again. The third shirt goes on.
You stop. You set your palms flat on the folded pile. You breathe out slowly through your teeth because if you breathe out through your nose your nose is going to make a sound. You breathe out until the breath is done. You pick up the next shirt.
When the laundry is folded you put it in the bottom drawer of the guest-room dresser. There is already a row of your things in the drawer from when you unpacked on Day Three. The drawer has the scan in it in its cardboard sleeve and the monograph Jana gave you in Prague and the photocopy of the staircase and the document you have carried in your bag since New York. Your hand goes to the envelope before you have seen it. The monograph has been on top of it. The envelope is one you did not put there. The washing machine finishes its cycle two rooms over.
The envelope is white. No address. No stamp. Your name on the front in pencil, in his handwriting, the specific pencil-pressure Joe used. The paper has the slight buckle of paper that has been in a drawer through at least one winter in a heated house. The envelope is not recent. How it arrived here you will not know.
Your hand goes flat on the top of the monograph. Your other hand goes to the edge of the envelope beneath. For half a second your hand is on the monograph spine and your fingers are on the envelope edge and the two surfaces are a quarter-inch apart and your body is holding both of them at once.
You close the drawer.
You do not open the envelope. You do not move the monograph. You do not take anything out. The drawer is closed and the contents of the drawer are the contents of the drawer and the envelope is in the drawer and the envelope has not been read and the envelope will continue to not be read.
You stand for a moment with your hand on the top of the dresser.
Your phone vibrates once beside your hand.
Alina — Hi. I was thinking about you today.
You look at the message. Two months since the last one you answered.
You type: I'm safe. I'm with Charlotte.
You do not wait for the reply.
You go to the bathroom attached to the guest room. You close the door. You sit on the closed toilet lid. The bathroom fan is not on. You do not turn the fan on. The house is quiet except for the sander in the garage which is far and muffled.
I am sorry I did not come to your funeral, babulya, you say, out loud, not loud, to the closed door.
You breathe.
I am sorry I did not say your name, mama, you say, to the floor.
You breathe again.
I am sorry I did not come to Istanbul for you, Yelena, you say, to your own hands on your knees.
You sit with your hands on your knees in the bathroom that is yours for the week and the floor is tile, Colorado tile, the specific too-bright tile of a 1990s Cherry Creek renovation that the previous owners chose in 1997, which your father did not change, which Karen did not change.
You breathe. You stand. You flush the toilet you did not use because somebody listening at the door would have expected to hear the flush. You run the water in the sink for the same reason. You come out.
You go back into the guest room. The drawer is closed. The laundry basket is empty. The stack of folded T-shirts is still a little uneven but the shirts are folded. You pick up the basket to take it back to the laundry room.
In the hallway you pause outside the garage door; the sander is still going behind it. You put your phone to your ear and press play. Piano. The voice you know. Three seconds. You press stop.
On the way out you pass the hallway mirror. You look at yourself briefly. You see the woman who folded the shirts. You look like the woman who folded the shirts. The mirror does not know about the drawer. You nod at yourself, once, the way you nod at people on the sidewalk who you do not know.
The sander in the garage keeps going.