The salesman did not ask why a woman in dental scrubs needed a lens no larger than a coat button. He merely set the small cardboard box on the glass display case between us.
“Does it record in the dark?” I asked.
“Infrared,” the young man said, tapping his thumb against his palm. “Up to thirty feet, clear as day.”
I slid my debit card through the reader. The screen showed eighty-nine dollars, a sum that felt like a quiet confession of guilt.
The box fit easily into my coat pocket, heavy and cold against my ribs as I walked back to my car.
I drove west toward Beaverton, the sky turning the color of wet asphalt. My mother, Ruth, lived in a small blue house with a gravel driveway that always crunched too loudly under my tires.
When I let myself in through her kitchen door, the smell of lavender laundry detergent was heavy in the warm air.
Ruth was standing at the end of the long wooden table, her iron moving with heavy, aggressive strokes across one of my stepfather’s plaid shirts. She did not stop when the screen door clicked shut.
“You look thin, Carrie,” she said, her vowels sharp and clipped.
