I put fresh flowers in the kitchen.
I brewed a pot of loose-leaf tea.
A Darjeeling I had been saving.
And I carried the cup to my reading chair.
I was home.
At quarter to three, two cars came up the street.
Maxine’s car.
And behind it, a rental sedan.
I watched through the front window.
Maxine stepped out with the air of someone arriving to collect something owed to her.
Brody got out of the passenger side of the rental.
Then Maxine’s mother, a small woman in a wine-colored wool coat, stepped out carefully.
Behind her came Bianca, looking around at the neighborhood with evaluating eyes and holding a carry-on.
I stayed in my chair.
Maxine walked up to the front door and typed her code.
The keypad light flashed red.
She typed it again.
More slowly this time.
Red again.
She pulled out her phone and opened the app.
Nothing changed.
She looked at Brody.
“Use yours,” she said.
Brody looked at his phone screen.
Then said, without dramatics, “Mine’s gone too.”
“I told you she was serious.”
Maxine knocked.
Then knocked again.
Then knocked a third time with the side of her fist.
Her voice rose as she called my name.
I heard it clearly through the window glass.
The particular pitch of someone who has never before been on the wrong side of a locked door they expected to open.
I set down my tea.
I walked to the door and opened it.
Not all the way.
I stood in the gap and looked at the four of them on my porch.
Maxine’s face was flushed and furious.
That bright red that comes not just from anger, but from embarrassment arriving at the same moment.
Her mother stood slightly behind her watching.
Bianca had taken a half-step back toward the stairs and was looking at the ground.
Brody met my eyes and said nothing.
“Edwina,” Maxine said, her voice stretched very thin.
“My mother has been traveling since six this morning.”