stopping—but then she would remember the photos drying in the darkroom, or the invaluable drawings Theo had painted over, and a new urgency would seize her.
Today, she had been more brazen and had gone up to the second floor. The first room she entered must have been Theo’s childhood bedroom: above a narrow twin bed frame (no mattress), Bruce Willis squinted out of a Die Hard movie poster. Faded soccer pennants littered the rest of the walls at uneven intervals. Theo had evidently turned the room into his office for the summer, because it now held two high-end computer monitors and a portable file cabinet. The file cabinet was locked, and after looking around the desk for the key, Kate had turned to YouTube and tried to find a tutorial on how to pick the lock. She was watching a video by someone called breakins881 when she heard the sound of the car coming up the driveway—not the engine, because that damn Tesla was silent, but the gravel beneath its wheels. She hightailed it downstairs, falling down the last few steps and nearly breaking her arm in the process, and planted herself cross-legged on the dining room carpet just seconds before Jemima breezed through the front door.
Way too close.
Anything that led to this tornado of guilt and adrenaline was probably not a good idea. Kate was supposed to be seeking out stability, not running around in a panic at the sound of a car in a driveway.
So she would stop poking around the house. She would stop.
She sighed and rubbed her eyes. She couldn’t even convince herself. She knew she’d be up late tonight watching that lock-picking video, and this time tomorrow she’d be up in Theo’s study again, trying to pry open that cabinet and get at whatever he wanted to hide.
She found Jemima in the kitchen, where Theo was kneeling at Oscar’s feet, untying his sneakers. Oscar was talking earnestly—and somewhat unintelligibly—about some bird they had seen at camp. When Kate came in, Theo looked up at her, then immediately back down. She got that strange, queasy feeling in her stomach again. It seemed impossible that he didn’t know what she had been doing.
“I’m going to show Kate my searching,” Jemima declared.
“Urchin,” Theo said automatically. He managed to pull off one of Oscar’s shoes. “Let’s get your snack first, okay? Oscar was getting hungry in the car.”
“Oscar’s always hungry,” Jemima said.
Theo raised his eyebrow as he tugged off the other shoe. “So are you.”
Oscar and Jemima settled in at the kitchen table, and after a second of hesitation, Kate sat across from them. Theo handed the kids their yogurts and offered Kate one, too, but she smiled and shook her head. Jemima pulled out the promised treasure, a fat purple sphere that was hollow in the middle and missing a chunk from one side. She held it out reverently to Kate, who made the requisite oohs and aahs. Oscar slid off his chair and came around to look at it, too.
“How was today?” Theo asked Kate as he took the fourth seat at the table. “Find anything interesting?”
“Oh—” She panicked, thinking he knew about her going upstairs, then realized he meant in the dining room. “Um. Some photographs. Not fancy ones, just some Kodak prints.”
“Of what?”
“Uh … you and your parents.” Distracted, she let Oscar take the sea urchin back from her. “Them on their wedding day. I think one is from your birthday—you had a cake shaped like a fire engine. There’s one of the three of you in front of this house. They’re cool.”
Cool was the wrong word, but she didn’t know what word would be better. Awkward, unexpected. Old. In the wedding photo, Miranda and Jake were standing next to a dour city official in front of some beige wall. Miranda was wearing an ivory jumpsuit and Jake’s hair was wavy and down to his chin. The terrible light had flattened the whole snapshot into a grimy yellow, except for Miranda’s mouth, which burned brightly under a slash of lipstick. Spots of overexposure spattered across Jake’s face, shimmying his expression from view. In the birthday photo, Jake held Theo aloft, big hands bunching the corduroy overalls, both their mouths pursed as they prepared to blow out the cake’s five candles. The house photo was awkwardly staged, Miranda’s and Jake’s expressions nearly catatonic while a toddler Theo screwed up his eyes as if preparing to yell. The background held the lushness of winter, the fuller edge