looked up. “I never said you were my maid.”
“Well, this place is a mess,” I said, stalking through the room. “Half of these clothes are Kelsey’s, and there are wet beach towels...”
“I know. I’m going to clean it up, don’t worry.”
I nudged a pair of shoes to the side of the room with my bare foot. “Tonight, before you go to bed.”
“It’s almost eleven o’clock. I’ll do it in the morning.”
“Tonight,” I repeated, and something in my tone caused Danielle to finally put her phone down.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, bewildered. “Are you mad at me for something? Is it still the haircut?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. Everything, suddenly, felt wrong. Things were feeling more and more wrong from one moment to the next. “Just do what I said,” I told her—that parental cop-out, that all-purpose directive I’d hated when my parents used it on me.
I ran a bath and soaked in it, lights out, until the water ran cold. What was wrong with me? I closed my eyes, but I could still picture Phil’s hand on Deanna’s shoulder, the slow circling of his thumb. I wondered if there was a way I could turn it around, make a joke out of it. Poor Deanna. Thank goodness she had you to comfort her. No—it wasn’t even funny. Besides, Phil would be annoyed about his ride with Victor; he would be grumpy when he came upstairs. I waited until my skin was wrinkled and soft before toweling off and sliding, still damp, into my pajamas. I tossed the pile of throw pillows out of the way—a silly splurge, since neither of us could be bothered to make the bed properly in the morning—and that’s when I saw it: a tiny black strip of fabric, tucked along the bed skirt on Phil’s side. I stared at it for a long time before touching it with my toe, spreading it out to see what it was.
A thong.
Not mine. Not Danielle’s—unless she’d spent her back-to-school money on silky black underwear.
There was a brief, horrible moment where I could picture Deanna Sievert in our bedroom, shedding one thin layer, then another. It was possible, of course—Danielle and I had been out of the house, and Rich had been out of town. And then I laughed out loud, shocked at how easily that image came to mind.
Of course not.
The thong was Kelsey’s—she’d been changing clothes in here; she was exactly the sort of teenager who wore a black silk thong. Why she felt the need to strip down altogether when trying on a few skirts, I had no idea.
I shook my head, remembering her standing on the front lawn in her short baby-doll dress, then casually following her parents down the street, apparently au natural. Apparently not worried about sudden gusts of wind.
I thought about flinging the underwear into Danielle’s room, one more item for her to clean off the floor. She would express disgust, and I would say, “Tell Kelsey to keep her panties on next time.” But it wasn’t worth the mention. Instead, I pinched the thong between two fingers and airlifted it to the wastebasket in the bathroom, where I shoved it deep beneath crumpled tissues and an empty bottle of shampoo.
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