I put the envelope on the kitchen counter, square in the middle, where you could not walk into that room and not see it.
I did not open it. I did not leave a note.
Then I carried my bag down and set it by the front door, and I sat down at the kitchen table facing the doorway, and I waited for the two of them to come home.
PART 3
They got back at twenty past six.
I heard the truck, then two doors, then Daniel’s voice in the driveway saying something short. He came in first with his keys still in his hand and stopped when he saw the bag by the door.
“So that’s it,” he said. “You’re going to make this dramatic.”
Ava came in behind him.
She didn’t look at me. She went straight for the stairs, and she got three steps across that kitchen before she saw the envelope on the counter.
She stopped.
She had my handwriting in front of her — her own name in my handwriting — and she stood there and read the front of that envelope for maybe six seconds.
Then she picked it up and opened it, and the receipts came out in a slab, thirty-one of them, and one slid off the counter and went under the stool.
