Mary is at my desk again when I get back.
Not sitting this time. Standing over it, her reading glasses on, a folder open in front of her that I don't recognize, the pages inside it cream-colored and slightly yellowed at the edges, old paper, the kind that's been in a dark place for a long time and taken on the smell of it. She's holding one page up to the light from the window, squinting at something in the bottom corner.
She doesn't hear me come in because I don't make noise when I move. Four years of training myself not to. Old habit, the kind that starts as survival and becomes personality.
I close the door.
She turns around. Doesn't startle. Mary doesn't startle. She's been startled too many times to bother with the response anymore.
"Lock it," she says.
I lock it.
She holds out
