Wine.
Specialty items.
Things her family apparently preferred.
She freshened the guest rooms.
She borrowed my good towels.
She had a long phone call with Bianca about day trips to Niagara and Elora Gorge.
Brody worked late both days.
The house ran on its normal surface tension.
And beneath it, I moved through my own parallel set of preparations that no one noticed.
Thursday morning, Kurt arrived at nine.
Maxine was already at her office.
Brody was at work.
Kurt was methodical and quiet and good at his job.
He replaced all four exterior locks in just under two hours with solid commercial-grade deadbolts.
The kind with real weight to them.
He walked me through the keypad setup on my phone and helped me configure the master code.
Then he showed me how to set a secondary access code.
A restricted one.
Active only for a set period.
I gave Brody a code that would expire Friday at midnight.
That was all.
After Kurt left, I worked through the house steadily.
I gathered Maxine’s items from the main floor.
The skincare things from the powder room she had gradually colonized.
Her laptop bag from the dining table where it permanently lived.
The stack of dry cleaning draped over my reading chair for the past three weeks.
I gathered the gourmet groceries from the counter, still in their delivery bags.
Then I packed Maxine’s other loose belongings from the common areas into two of her own tote bags.
I carried everything to the covered side porch.
Stacked it carefully on the wooden rack I normally use for garden boots and muddy shoes.
And locked the door behind me.
I checked the deadbolt.
I checked it again.
Then I put the kettle on.
That evening, Brody came through the back door and stopped when he saw the new keypad.
He looked at it for a moment.
Then looked at me.
I told him I had updated the security.
I told him his code was active in the app until Friday at midnight.
He sat down at the table.
I could see him working through it.
“Her family arrives Friday afternoon,” he said.
“I know.”