She was amazed by the intensity of the anger she felt toward her mother. She wanted to go back out into the kitchen and scream at Eleanor to get down off the damn ladder and leave her kitchen the hell alone. But that had never been her way where Eleanor was concerned. Instead, following her father’s lead, Joanna had always avoided direct confrontation, going around her mother rather than through her. To be fair, the rules of the game were somehow changing, and Eleanor had yet to figure it out. In the past, right or wrong, Joanna would have swallowed her anger, returned to the kitchen, and helped her mother put things right. But tonight she didn’t. If she had wanted the kitchen cleaned right then, she would have done it herself. Instead, Joanna Brady had other concerns. Like coming to terms with this room, for in-stance. Twice now, she had raced through it as though the space was full of demons. Now, she needed to find a way to stand here and look around at the familiar furniture, seeing it as a stranger might and trying to decide if it was, indeed, still the same place it had been two days earlier.
