Tess had missed Mara's call while she was washing Jo's container. Her phone showed one voicemail. Before she played it, another call came in from Nell.
“I am at June's,” Nell said. “Mara gave me the key.”
Tess held the wet container in one hand. “Why are you telling me?”
“Because I don't want you coming tomorrow and finding me in here like a thief. If you want me out, come say it.”
“You called me to summon me to my mother's house?”
“Come or don't. I wanted you to know whose choice this was.”
The call ended. Tess played Mara's voicemail. It's about June's house. She set the container down and called her sister. Mara answered from the car, said she was coming back, and tried to explain. Tess told her to meet them there. She did not want the facts in the car, where each sentence could be arranged before she saw what Mara had given away.
June's porch light was on. Tess had spent Monday watching mourners pass in and out beneath it. Now Nell opened the door and stepped aside. She did not say welcome. Tess moved past her into the sitting room and stopped.
Nell sat in June's armchair, or had been sitting there when Tess arrived. A folded blanket lay across the cushion, and June's chipped blue cup stood on the table. Tess felt an absurd urge to warn her that the chair's left arm gave way if you pushed on it. Then she was angry at the impulse. Nell knew June's house. Perhaps she knew the chair better than Tess.
“Where is the case?” Nell asked.
“Somewhere you cannot get it.”
“I didn't ask Mara for it.”
“You asked my friend. You asked Mrs. Dyer. You went to the hotel. You don't get to make this one request sound harmless because you haven't yet taken a step toward the cupboard.”
Nell looked at the blue cup. “I used to sleep in this room when I got back too late to find another place. June would leave water by the bed.”
“She left water for me too. She also left you six names and me a job.”
“I didn't choose those names alone.”
“You chose mine.”
Nell's face tightened. Tess had expected a defense of aliases, perhaps another recital of what June owed. Instead Nell said, “I called because I didn't want you to see my shoes under the bed and think I was pretending to be her.”
“I'm not thinking you're June.” Tess looked toward the kitchen. “I'm thinking Mara opened a house we haven't even emptied.”
Tess had left her coat on. She did not know whether she was staying long enough to take it off. Nell pulled the blanket from June's chair and folded it. The careful movement made Tess feel briefly cruel for entering with a charge, and then she remembered Dev holding the work phone.
“Did you tell Owen I was collecting Alma?” Tess asked.
Nell kept folding. “He knew June had a fallback. He knew you had her case.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“I told him June had written your name next to Friday. He decided what that meant.”
“You heard me tell you Alma refused.”
“I told him June's plan existed. You can call that a lie if you want.”
“I can call it using a dead woman's plan to send a man to my work.”
Nell's hands stopped. “You think I wanted him there?”
“I think you wanted him somewhere other than with you. He called my library. He asked whether I would collect Alma after her shift. How did he know that was the question to ask?”
Nell did not answer. Tess felt her own anger acquire a little uncertainty: not about whether Owen's call had happened, but about which precise words Nell had said to him. Nell had built her defense to leave a gap. Tess would not fill it in with a fact she had not heard.
“Alma lost tomorrow's shift,” Tess said. Ren had sent the news while Tess was leaving Jo. “Her employer believed Owen's story enough to take her hours.”
Nell looked up sharply. “He went there?”
“He called. They took her off. She'll be short on rent because of a move she never agreed to.”
Nell sat on the arm of the chair, not in its seat. “June would have found money.”
“June isn't here. Alma has to ask the people who took her work why they did it.” Tess took a breath. “You can tell her what Owen bought from you.”
“Ren wants a statement with my name on it.”
“Alma wants to know what he knows. Ren can ask her whether she'll hear you. Nobody here gets to make her take it.”
Nell opened the front door for Mara, then returned to the chair with the house key in her hand. Mara paused when she saw Tess's coat still on. Tess remembered that Mara had been the one to show her the slips, then to correct the parts she had held back. Her sister had promised no new route for Alma. She had found a route for Nell instead.
“I told her one night,” Mara said.
Tess looked at the key. “Did you tell her she could use my mother's chair too?”
Mara's expression changed. Nell stood up. For an instant Tess wanted to laugh at the smallness of the chair inside the larger wrong. Nell set the house key on the table.