A weak smile appeared.
Dad shut the door.
The three of us looked around the little room.
I noticed things I had missed through the window. Mom’s sewing basket. Dad’s reading glasses. Two framed photographs. Their medications arranged neatly on a shelf. A small electric kettle.
They hadn’t been staying there for one or two nights.
They had made a life fit into a room that had once held rakes and paint cans.
I kept my voice calm.
“How long?”
Mom looked at Dad.
“Almost four months,” he said.
I turned away for a moment.
Four months.
Every first Monday, I had sent them money.
Every Sunday, I had called.
Mom had told me about tomatoes from the garden, a neighbor’s new dog, Dad’s aching shoulder, the church fundraiser, a broken kitchen faucet.
She had never mentioned sleeping behind the laundry shed.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Mom twisted her wedding ring.
“Because we thought we could fix it.”
“What exactly needed fixing?”
Dad sat on the other bed and placed the rusty key on his knee.
“It started last year.”
Derek had lost his job at the regional construction supplier. I knew that part. He had told me the company was restructuring.
What I had not known was that the job loss had been followed by debt.
Not catastrophic debt, Dad explained. Credit cards. A vehicle loan. Some failed online business idea Derek had invested in with a friend.
“He was embarrassed,” Mom said. “Your brother has always had trouble admitting when he’s scared.”
“And Veronica?”
“She was scared too.”
That surprised me.
From the living room window, Veronica had seemed perfectly comfortable giving orders.
Dad noticed my expression.
“She can be difficult,” he said. “But difficult isn’t the same as evil.”
That sounded exactly like my father.
He had spent his entire life refusing to turn people into simple categories.
Good wood could have knots.
Badly warped wood could sometimes be straightened.
He believed much the same about people.
“So they moved in?” I asked.
