Bonnie's last house Friday afternoon had hardwood floors throughout, not a single square-foot of carpet, so she left the vacuum in her truck.

"Bonnie here, hello..."

Generally, she felt unencumbered walking into this home—owned by a proper couple near in age to herself. It was more than the vacuum's missing heft. The wife respected Bonnie's tasks and kibitzed about which supermarkets had the best prices on cleaning supplies. The husband she rarely saw. The few times she had—around holidays, the odd day where travel or a tee time placed him home in the afternoon—he'd been cordial.

Today, though, Bonnie pushed through the screen door encumbered. Very much so.

She laid her keys on the coffee table, careful with her metal Go Feds! keychain on the inlaid surface.

"Hello," she repeated. "Bonnie here..."

Why hadn't Jean come to greet her? Typically Jean, who was active in charitable foundations across the area, would be knitting in the living room or simmering a stew in the kitchen.

Bonnie retrieved her supplies from the coat closet. Lowering the bin of sponges and aerosol sprays from the shelf, she noted a faint odor.

Smoke, or alcohol?

Crackers?

The odor came from the husband's tweed coat.

She mentally filed this information away and carried the supply bin to the kitchen. As she set it on the island, she noticed Wallace Blakely sitting in the breakfast nook.

"Why, hello," she said, startled. "Are you traveling today? Golfing?"

"Recovering," he said.

He was holding his head, hunched over a water glass. He wore loafers and jeans too big for his frame.

Bonnie said, "Late night at the bank?"

A corner of his mouth lifted. "Sometimes work can hurt my head. Not like this."

As they chatted, Bonnie filled a plastic bag with products she would need upstairs—window cleaner, Magic Eraser.

"I'm sorry to hear it," she said. "Is Jean not feeling well either?"

Blakely nodded. "She's resting upstairs. In her case, the doctor thinks a virus is the culprit."

"Shall I get the sheets, or do you think I'd disturb her?"

He seemed to struggle processing this domestic concern, turning his water glass clockwise, then back counterclockwise. He scratched the part of his silver hair.

"Perhaps you'll peek from the hall," he said. "See whether her eyes are open."

"Certainly," Bonnie said.

She started for the spiral staircase, then paused.

Is now the time to do it?

She'd been expecting to deceive Jean, not Wallace, Blakely. She had planned to say the mailbox flap was open, or that an envelope had fallen out—some small fib to explain why she had fetched the mail, which wasn't a task she commonly performed for them.

A three-quarter wall separated the breakfast nook from where she stood. Blakely couldn't see a thing.

Bonnie felt her pulse rise. Heat came into her wrists. She boosted up on tiptoes involuntarily, which made her back bark with pain.

In a rush, she took the envelopes from her pocket—fumbling them forward but recovering before they dropped—and dumped them on the counter next to the Blakelys' juicing machine.

Breathing normally again, she tiptoed past the three-quarter wall. In the breakfast nook, Wallace Blakely stared at his water.

Later, Jean would come downstairs for hot tea and figure her husband had gotten the mail. She wouldn't bother confirming with a question. They weren't that sort of couple.

He, the breadwinner, would simply assume mail made its way inside over the course of the day—without giving a second thought to the logistics of how.

Bonnie started up the stairs, watching Blakely between the banister spindles.

She disliked how she felt. Life at this stage thrummed from one day to the next without danger or hard choices. Ben or—more often—Sandy supplied occasional volatility, but a child's trouble always happened at some remove from one's own. She had worked hard for this stability. She had earned it.

The Merritts would never have put Bonnie in such a fix.

Of course, the matter wasn't over. Not fully. When she came through the kitchen again to scrub the cabinets, she could still slip the envelope—addressed in Wyatt's neat cursive—from her pocket onto the mail stack. Then Wallace Blakely would read the letter and decide the Glassers' fate himself.

Bonnie stopped at the fourth step.

Offhandedly, she asked, "Around the neighborhood last night, were you?"

"Not quite," he said. "But not far either. Over by the elementary school, Roosevelt. If you know the area."

"I know it well," Bonnie said. "A party?"

The loan officer's chin shriveled in what might've been consternation. Bonnie had had few idle conversations like this with him. She didn't know his expressions.

Does he think I'm being nosy? Or wasting time that should be spent cleaning?

"No," he answered. "Well, yes—I suppose it was a party. But it didn't feel like one. It felt like some...reunion, some family reunion nobody knew about until they showed up."

His chin returned to its normal shape, and he chuckled lightly, seeming surprised by his own eloquence.

Bonnie knew what he meant. Though Val invited her to every party she cleaned for, she'd only ever attended one: the party Val had thrown Bonnie for her sixtieth birthday. There had been other families she cleaned for, kids she'd watched screaming through their backyards as she scrubbed backsplash grime. There'd been strangers and cake and drinks, of which she'd had one.

It had been a grand time.

Why hadn't she gone to another? It never felt appropriate. They moved in different circles—Bonnie didn't have much of a circle—and it seemed like attaching herself to their merriment would cross some line.

She said, "You enjoyed it?"

"Yes, tremendously," Blakely said. "I won't soon forget."

Bonnie smiled, patting the pocket that contained the envelope. Maybe she would show up for the Glassers' next party. Who cared about lines? About circles?

Besides, it wouldn't hurt to keep an eye on the mahogany table in the foyer—to catch any stains before they set.