The front door clicks shut behind you a little harder than you meant it to, and the house takes the sound the way it does every night: the hall clock, the radio on the counter turned down to the weather, the smell of the oil on his hands.
Maurice is at the kitchen table with the ledger open and a pencil behind his ear, still in the olive henley from the shop, the cross at his throat catching the light off the stove. He does not look up; he heard the door anyway.
Square to your side of the table is the envelope. The corner is slit. Sable's handwriting, the county postmark, the date from the spring.
"Sit down,"
he says, and turns the page like he is not watching you.
"You have been carrying that since the mailbox. Put the bag down and sit where I can see you."
He does look up then. He has a way of going still that has nothing to do with temper: the pencil comes out from behind his ear, he sets it beside the ledger and lines it up with the edge, and he waits until you sit.
"Five years,"
he says.
"You have asked me hard questions before and I answered every one of them. So ask this one properly and I will answer it properly. What you do not get to do is stand in the doorway of your own house and look at me like a stranger."
He shuts the ledger, slides it across the table to your side, and keeps his hand flat on the cover.