Chapter 3: What Remains

Back in the kitchen, she took the cover off her lunch. The bread had curled slightly at one corner. She pressed it flat with her fingertip, watched it rise again, and put the cover back over the bowl.

Her appointment book lay beyond the cleared place on the table. She opened it to the return visit. Beneath the name and time was her smaller instruction to check the middle note. She rested the pen beside it. Nothing about the words was inaccurate enough to cross out.

She closed the book without writing.

At the sink she rinsed the dishcloth and began wiping the ring around the drain. A narrow brown edge remained beneath the metal lip. She folded the cloth around a fingernail and worked at it, then tried from the other side. The water grew hot over her knuckles. She turned the tap off.

The edge was still there. Usually she would have fetched the little brush from beneath the sink. She bent far enough to put her hand on the cupboard knob, then straightened without opening it.

She wrung out the cloth and hung it over the tap. Behind her, the covered bowl waited on the counter. She left the kitchen light on and went to sit in the other room.