“I am **Major General Eleanor Mercer**.”
“Your late grandfather Arthur Mercer Senior’s youngest sister.”
“Your great-aunt.”
“And for eight years, Colonel Mercer…”
She looked down at me sitting on the stairs:
“…I have been your perimeter guard.”
***
CHAPTER 2: THE REVERSE PERSPECTIVE OF AN EIGHT-YEAR WATCH
The silence in the half-empty house was concussive.
Every Thursday.
Four hundred and sixteen consecutive Thursdays.
Eight years of arriving at nine in the morning, scrubbing the kitchen island, polishing the brass fixtures on the stair rail, vacuuming the braided wool rugs, and eating a tuna sandwich alone in my front seat while checking my bank account to make sure sixteen dollars remained for Willa’s school lunch card.
“You knew?”
I whispered.
The tears that had never come during eight years of cleaning other people’s bathrooms finally welled behind my eyes, hot and caustic:
