I looked down at the cardboard box at my feet, the top flaps open to show the worn spines of my college accounting textbooks.
“I want you to leave, Graham,” I said.
He hesitated, his mouth opening as if to argue, but the silence between us was too heavy. He turned and walked down the steps, his shoes clicking against the concrete walkway.
I stood in the hallway for a long minute after the door clicked shut. I reached out with my toe and pushed the unopened box of books against the baseboard, the cardboard scraping against the wood.
The cardboard scraped against the baseboard, leaving a thin grey smudge on the white paint.
Graham did not look at the mark, but he stood up and adjusted his watch strap twice before he reached for his coat on the back of the chair.
“We need to be there by ten to eleven,” he said.
The lobby of the Sheriff’s Department smelled of damp wool, old floor wax, and the sweet, heavy scent of cheap vanilla air freshener from a plug-in near the water cooler.
We sat on a long oak bench opposite a thick pane of safety glass where a clerk in a beige uniform typed slowly with two fingers, her small silver earrings clicking against her phone receiver as she held it to her shoulder.
Graham pressed his palms together flat, his thumbs locking as he stared at his own winter boots.
“Do you remember the Thanksgiving before last?” he asked.
I looked at the black lettering on the office directory across the room, listing the county commissioners and the small-claims division.
“We went to your mother’s,” I said. “We brought the sweet potatoes with the pecans.”
“No,” Graham said, his voice dropping to a murmur that barely cleared the hum of the soda machine in the corner. “Three years ago. The year we bought the blue rug for the hallway.”
He did not look up when a deputy in brown trousers walked past us holding a clipboard and a heavy ring of brass keys.
“We had the dinner on the small drop-leaf table in the kitchen because her dining table was being refinished,” Graham said.
“I remember,” I said.
“You went to reach for the basket of rolls,” he said.
The clerk behind the glass stood up and slid a stack of yellow log sheets into a metal filing drawer, the latch snapping shut with a sharp metallic pop.
“My mother asked us to hold hands for the blessing,” Graham said.
He rubbed his palms against his knees, leaving dark streaks on his grey trousers where the fabric was slightly worn.
“She caught your wrist before you could pull your hand back,” he said.
I looked at the radiator beneath the window, its silver paint peeling in long, brittle curls that had fallen onto the brown linoleum below.
“She had on that cream cardigan,” Graham said. “The one she wore last Sunday. Before the casserole stained the hem.”
He cleared his throat, but the sound was dry and thin.
“She was holding it tight,” Graham said. “I saw her thumb pressing right into the bone near your watch.”
“You did not say anything,” I said.
“We were in the middle of the prayer,” he said.
The clerk behind the glass window tapped on the circular metal speaker with the tip of her pen.
“Mr. and Mrs. Vance,” she said.
Graham did not move from the bench, his fingers still locked tight between his knees.
“She kept her hand there until Paul started carving the turkey,” Graham said. “Your skin was white where her fingers had been.”
I stood up, but my knees felt loose, as if the floor had sloped downward toward the corner of the room where the umbrellas were dripping.
“You saw that,” I said.
“I thought she was just trying to get your attention because she wanted everyone to quiet down,” Graham said.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small packet of tissue, turning it over and over between his fingers without opening it.
“She told me in the kitchen later that you were being disrespectful by reaching before the grace was finished,” he said.
“You never told me she said that,” I said.
The deputy with the clipboard opened the heavy oak inner door and looked out into the waiting room.
“Mr. Vance,” the deputy said. “We can take you back first.”
Graham stood up, his shoulders rounded under his brown corduroy jacket as he adjusted his watch strap one more time.
He did not look back at me as he followed the deputy through the door, his boots making a soft, sticky sound on the clean floor.
The heavy latch clicked into place behind them, leaving only the sound of the clerk’s typewriter and the low rumble of a truck passing on the street outside.
I sat back down on the hard oak bench and looked at my boots.
The clock on the wall above the clerk’s desk ticked once every sixty seconds with a dry, plastic snap that seemed to fill the room.
