The Favor Wore Thin: What She Spent on Him - by Cassandra Mile

The key sat on the envelope with its teeth up, and Diane did not move it. Cole’s name showed through the window. Down the hall the tub was dry, the rail finally solid, the mat still shadowed where a payment had stopped answering to its price. She could feel him when she shifted her weight. He could smell her on the wrist that had signed every line she pointed to. Before the printout, before the suitcase left for the plant apartment, there had only been a loose bracket and a landlord’s fine. His father was in Akron and not picking up. Diane, forty-one, short black hair always damp at the nape, kept the duplex from coming apart with exact corners and a gold band she worried thin. Cole, old enough that he had never practiced the word Mom, was the one who could make the screws bite. She told him the finished bar would buy an end to the phone-lies. He heard a reason to stay in the doorway. The towel dragged his wrist. Neither of them mentioned it.