I stood there holding it, feeling ridiculous for how upset I was.
Nothing had been stolen. Nothing was broken. But someone had touched something private and expected me to accept it because the evidence looked small.
She found reasons to go upstairs every time she visited.
After that, I started paying attention.
Kathryn had always been intrusive. Over the next few weeks, though, her intrusions changed dramatically. She found reasons to go upstairs every time she visited. If I left the kitchen, she drifted. If Austin got distracted, she disappeared down the hallway. The bathroom drawer sat slightly crooked afterward. My jewelry box lid would be misaligned. The closet door would be open when I knew I had shut it.
And every time, my underwear drawer looked wrong.
Then Kathryn made the mistake of saying something.
She had only one way of knowing what I owned.
We were eating dinner when she looked at me over her tea and said, “You do spend a lot on underthings.”
