He was out of the car before it had fully stopped, which told her he had been driving fast and that whatever Megan had communicated to him on the phone had reached him with enough urgency to produce haste. He came up the porch steps taking two at a time and appeared in the doorway looking simultaneously apologetic and winded, which Eleanor found, despite everything, faintly endearing.
“I didn’t know,” he said immediately. “I told her specifically not to, I said you needed the place to yourself this weekend, I said—”
“You told her enough,” Eleanor said, and the words were not unkind but they were not lenient either.
He stopped. Looked around the room, which was clean and quiet and entirely itself again. Looked at his mother, standing at the sink, drying her hands on the dish towel she had made from an old flour-sack fabric she had bought at an estate sale because it reminded her of her own grandmother’s kitchen.
“I’m sorry,” he said, quieter now.
Eleanor dried her hands and hung the towel on the hook by the sink where it had always hung.
“I know,” she said.