Dad sits in the study watching the eleven o’clock news but really waiting for Mom. I watch from the kitchen window as she and Jules face off in silence. They look eerie in the dark, like sculptures of people. Jules hasn’t moved any closer to Mom. He’s afraid of her. And she is afraid of him.
“There’s a sitcom version of this story,” I tell Dad. “We might even have seen it.”
“Sitcoms leave out a lot,” Dad says. “That’s what makes them funny.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know, Hannah,” he says. “But I’m getting tired.”
By the time Dad and I call good night to Mom through the back door, Jules has gone inside. Mom is standing alone in the Salazars’ moonlit yard.
The next morning, Mom shakes leaves from her hair into the kitchen sink before she starts cooking our cheese omelets and making Brian’s and Molly’s school lunches.
“You slept in their yard?” Dad asks. “You lay down?”
“I dozed.”
“You’re lucky he didn’t call the police.”
“Felons don’t call the police.”
“Are you pleased with yourself? Do you consider this a victory?”
“You need not concern yourself any longer, Bruce,” Mom says, “with what I feel.”
* * *
Mom is suddenly very busy. There are no more non sequiturs about Jules Jones, but now and then a slight smile will drift onto her face when she flicks her eyes in the direction of the Salazar house.
“What?” Dad asks after one such smile.
“What?” Mom rounds her eyes in exaggerated innocence.
“I sense something afoot that may not be permissible by law.”
“Well, if that is true,” Mom says slyly, “and in no way am I suggesting that it is—aren’t you better off, as a lawyer, not knowing about it?”
One evening, after Mom picks us up from Girl Scouts （Molly）， baseball practice （Brian）， and Yearbook （me）， she detours to one of the malls and says, “I need to grab something at Ace Hardware.”
“Can I come?” Brian asks. He loves Ace Hardware.
“I’d rather you didn’t, just this once.”
After a very long time, she emerges with an awkward, bulky bag wrapped so that we can’t see what’s inside it. She asks me to move into the backseat and places the bag beside her in front, with a seat belt around it.
“What did you buy?” Brian asks.
“Personal items.”
“So personal they need a seat belt?” I ask.
“That’s so the thing doesn’t beep.”
“You never tell us anything anymore,” Molly says.
“I never did,” Mom says. “You told me things.”
“We’re lonely,” Molly wails. “We feel left out.”
“Yeah,” Brian says.
Mom swivels around to face the three of us in the backseat. “The world is a lonely place,” she says. “I’ve never tried to hide that from you.”
* * *
A week after my AP exams, Mom looks out the back window during dinner and says, “He’s watching us.”
We all look out. The days are getting longer, and the sky is still bright. There are robins all over our lawn. “Where?” I ask.