What Vera Saw

My grandma Vera came over on a Sunday with a rotisserie chicken and the specific kind of attention that grandmothers have when they haven't seen a kid in three weeks, and within about ten minutes of walking in the door she'd noticed Sophie flinch at the sound of the balcony latch.

"Why did she just do that," Vera asked, quiet, not looking away from Sophie, who had gone very still and very focused on her own hands.

"Do what," my mom said, already sounding tired in the specific way she got when Vera started a sentence like that.

"She flinched. At the door."

"She's three, Mom. She flinches at the vacuum too."

Vera didn't push it that day, but I watched her watch Curtis for the rest of the visit, the way you watch something you already suspect but can't yet prove, and when she hugged me goodbye at the door she held on about two seconds longer than usual and said, quiet enough that only I could hear it, "You call me. Any time. I mean any time, Maya."

I didn't call her that week. I told myself there was nothing yet worth calling about, which was the first of several times I'd be wrong about that.