**Part 2**
“Honey, what did you find?” Thomas asked as he rushed in. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the packets of powder strewn around.
My mother had been a kleptomaniac.
Before I could respond, I heard tires on the driveway.
I scrambled to the window, still clutching one of the bags, and pulled the curtain back.
I blinked.
Eleanor’s silver sedan. Slowing to a stop right behind Thomas’ parked car. I could see Harold in the passenger seat, calmly adjusting his glasses.
The bag slipped from my fingers onto the floor.
I heard tires on the driveway.
“What did you do?!” I asked my husband.
“Nothing, I… I thought it would be best if my parents came and fetched what they left. I didn’t know that it was… this!” Thomas responded, his eyes wide.
The front door opened before I could think of what to say in response. Eleanor breezed in ahead of her husband, a Tupperware container of banana bread balanced on one palm as if this were a normal weekend visit.
“What did you do?!”
Harold trailed behind her, hands in his coat pockets, eyebrows already lifted at the state of me.
“Sweetheart,” Eleanor said, “we were halfway here with this anyway, a little thank-you for letting us camp out, and then Thomas called and said you were upset, so we just drove straight over.”
I couldn’t speak. I just stepped aside and pointed toward the guest room like a woman gesturing at a crime scene.
Thomas caught my elbow as he passed. “Claire, baby, breathe. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out.”
“Thomas called and said you were upset.”
“Figure it out,” I repeated, my voice climbing. “Thomas, there are illegal substances in our house!”
When Eleanor saw what was lying on the floor and the bed, the Tupperware container sagged in her grip.
She took in the propped mattress, the rows of little bags fanned across the floor, the open notebook, and the careful map. Her face changed.
Confusion first. Then a slow, dawning horror.
Then a pink flush climbed to her hairline!
Her face changed.
Personally, I felt her reaction to our discovery of her criminal life was very mild.
My MIL sat down heavily on the bed.
“Oh,” she said. Just that.
“Oh?” I said. “Eleanor. Oh?!”
She pressed her fingertips to her mouth. “Claire, honey. Did you open any of them?”
“No!”
“Thank God.” She exhaled so hard it came out shaky, and then, to my absolute bewilderment, she laughed! A short, embarrassed laugh!
Her criminal life.
Then her eyes filled up, and she laughed again!
Harold stepped closer to her. “Ellie, honey. Just tell them.”
My MIL waved him off without looking at him.
Thomas glanced between his mother and me, clearly trying to decide whose side of the crazy circus to stand on. “Mom. You’re not helping.”
“I know! I know!” She twisted her wedding ring around her finger. “I just… I really didn’t expect any of this.”
“Just tell them.”
“Eleanor, I have been standing here for an hour thinking my MIL is running some kind of illegal operation out of my guest room.”
Harold made a small, strangled sound behind his hand.
“Don’t you dare laugh, Harold!” I reprimanded him.
“I’m not laughing!”
“You are absolutely laughing! Please. Someone. Just tell me what’s going on.”
“Don’t you dare laugh!”
Eleanor smoothed her skirt. She wouldn’t quite meet my eyes.
“I was going to take them all with me yesterday,” she said. “Truly. I packed the suitcase first thing in the morning, but it wouldn’t zip with the last row in, so I tucked those under the mattress, and I thought, well, I’ll just pop back today and slip them out.”
“You were going to take them,” I said slowly, “just like that?”
Thomas pinched the bridge of his nose. “Mom, I really love you, but I need you to say something that makes this better.”
She wouldn’t quite meet my eyes.
She opened her mouth, then looked at the floor.
My FIL cleared his throat gently. “It’s really not that serious, Ellie. My flour girl.”
Eleanor’s head snapped up, and something crossed her face that I hadn’t seen before. Not anger. Something smaller and more private. A little wince, as if he’d stepped on her toe in a nice restaurant.
Harold saw it too. His mouth softened. “Sorry, love.”
“It’s really not that serious.”
I caught the whole thing and knew what I had to do.
“Eleanor,” I said, quieter now. “I need to see. I’m sorry. I have to.”
“Claire, please don’t!”
“I have to.”
I crouched down and picked up the nearest bag. E-14. My hands were not steady. Thomas moved to stand beside me, one hand on my shoulder, half bracing me and half bracing himself.
“I need to see.”
I peeled the Ziploc open.
I expected a smell that would tell me my life was about to change. Something chemical, something wrong.
Instead, there was almost nothing. A faint, dry, nutty warmth. Like the pantry at my grandmother’s house on a summer afternoon.
I lifted the bag closer to my nose and breathed in properly.
My eyebrows drew together. I looked at my husband, then at Eleanor, who now had both hands over her face.
I peeled the Ziploc open.
“This,” I said, and my voice had gone strange and thin, “this smells like…”
I couldn’t finish. I dipped a fingertip in, touched it to my tongue, and stared at the ceiling as my whole panicked morning quietly rearranged itself around one very confused, very floury conclusion.
“It’s flour,” I said out loud, my nose still in the bag. “It’s just… flour!”
