The Days Father Is Away

His father has been gone one day when his stepmother gets into his bed. The curtains stay drawn. She is afraid of her own voice and of his father finding out. She answers with a date, not a refusal. He returns the day after tomorrow. By dawn she is still there, and the house is holding a secret on a clock. / Heels stop in the stairwell. A young woman sets down a suitcase and fits a key into the lock. Nobody inside has said her name. The stepmother's night and this arrival cannot both stay hidden, and the key means the newcomer already belongs to the address.