Chapter Four
I arrived at my home on Canterbury Lane near dusk as requested, parked the Turtle beside an unfamiliar yellow Volvo and entered the house through the garage. Quartered in the Dalton’s spare bedroom for the last two weeks, I wondered about knocking, but mom sounded tense when she telephoned, so I chose haste over propriety. She had smelled my dirty work clothes in the past. Did my father have another fight at work? Did they delay the divorce proceedings? Something was amiss. Someone had replaced the broken windowpane in the front room, and the aroma of shortbread cookies caressed my nostrils, “Mother?”
“I’m in the kitchen, dear,” she called.
Mother never puttered in the kitchen anymore, or made cookies, and never telephoned me at the store. I hurried through the dining room
