Week 1: Saturday

Saturday. No showings. No clients. No reason to dress up.

Lindsay stood in front of her closet in her underwear, one hand on her hip, replaying the morning. She'd made waffles for Damian — the same batter, the same real maple syrup, the same scrambled eggs on the side. She'd promised strawberries, but there weren't any. She'd forgotten to buy them yesterday because she'd been distracted by the outfit thing all afternoon, the question of what she'd agreed to and why chasing itself in circles through her head while she walked buyers through open floor plans and updated kitchens. She'd meant to stop at the store on her way home. She'd driven right past it. She hadn't realised until she was standing in front of the refrigerator at six-thirty this morning, reaching for the buttermilk, and saw the empty crisper drawer.

So she'd made waffles with bananas again. The same bananas from Thursday, slightly riper now, speckled with brown. Still good. Still fine.

Damian had thanked her the way he always thanked her — warm, sincere, his voice doing that thing where it went slightly quiet on the word thank you as if he were still surprised anyone would do anything for him. But when he'd looked at his plate, his face had fallen. Not dramatically. Not performatively. Just a small flicker — the corners of his mouth dipping, his eyebrows drawing together for a fraction of a second before he smoothed the expression away.

"These are great, Lindsay. Thank you."

He'd meant it. She could tell he meant it. But she'd seen the flicker. The tiny, quickly-suppressed disappointment of a boy who had been promised something and given something else, even if he was too polite to complain, even if he was genuinely grateful for what he had.

And before she'd thought about it — before she'd weighed the words or examined the impulse or considered whether this was a reasonable thing to say — she'd heard herself speak.

"I'll pick up strawberries today. We'll do them tomorrow."

His face had brightened. That slow, spreading illumination, the way the kitchen looked when the morning sun finally cleared the trees. "Really? Thanks!"

Now she was standing in her closet in her underwear, wondering what she was thinking. Her Saturday — her one completely free day of the week, the day she'd planned to catch up on laundry and paperwork and maybe go for a run if the weather held — was now reorganised around a trip to the grocery store to buy strawberries for a teenager's waffles. She'd made plans. She'd had intentions. And then she'd seen a nineteen-year-old boy look slightly sad about fruit and she'd jettisoned all of it without a second thought.

And he hadn't washed his plate. Again. He'd left it on the table and gone upstairs and she'd cleared it without a word, scraped the leftover banana into the trash, rinsed the syrup off the plate, put it in the dishwasher. She hadn't even thought about asking him to do it. The thought had simply not occurred to her until she was already wiping down the table, and by then he was gone and the plate was clean and there was nothing to say.

She reached into the closet. Her hand passed over her jeans — the comfortable ones, the ones she wore every Saturday, the ones that were soft at the knees and slightly frayed at the hem. Her hand passed over them and landed on a skirt.

She pulled it out. A fitted navy skirt, knee-length, not as formal as her work pencil skirt — no lining, no zipper at the back — but structured, professional-looking, the kind of thing she'd wear to a casual lunch with clients or a parent-teacher conference back when she'd still been teaching. She paired it with a soft white blouse, fitted at the waist, scoop neck, the one that made her collarbones look elegant. Low heels. Not the nude pumps — something more casual, a wedge in tan leather.

She put on the outfit. She stood in front of the mirror on the back of the closet door.

The navy skirt sat high on her waist and hugged her hips, the fabric skimming over her thighs and ending just at the knee. The white blouse was tucked in, accentuating the inward curve of her waist, the outward swell of her hips, the full round shape of her breasts. She turned sideways. The blouse was still tight across the chest — tighter than it had been a month ago, but not unflattering. It pulled slightly at the buttons, and the pulling made her look fuller, more feminine, more present in her body. She brushed her hair out, letting the blonde waves fall over her shoulders.

She looked good. She looked more than good. She looked like she was going somewhere.

She wasn't going anywhere. She was going to the grocery store to buy strawberries.

She was about to head downstairs when Greg appeared in the bedroom doorway. He was holding a coffee mug — his own, not the one she set out for him, because she'd stopped setting one out — and wearing the weekend uniform she'd seen him wear for two decades: old jeans, a polo shirt, running shoes. He looked at her. He looked at the skirt. He looked at the heels.

"You have a showing today?"

"No." She was reaching for her bag, not looking at him. "Why?"

He gestured vaguely at her outfit, the coffee mug tipping slightly in his hand. "You're dressed up."

Lindsay looked down at herself. She was dressed up. She was wearing a skirt and heels and her good blouse and she had put on lipstick — when had she put on lipstick? — to go to the grocery store on a Saturday morning. She opened her mouth and the answer came out before she'd examined it, before she'd even registered the question behind the question.

"I just felt like dressing up."

Greg shrugged. "Looks nice." He took a sip of his coffee and wandered off toward the home office, already scrolling his phone, the interaction complete.

Lindsay stared at the empty doorway.

Why was she dressed up? She was going to put on jeans. She always wore jeans on Saturdays. She'd worn jeans on Saturdays for fifteen years, since Naomi was in elementary school, since they'd bought this house, since before Greg stopped noticing what she wore. She'd reached into the closet for jeans and her hand had landed on a skirt instead and she hadn't even paused.

You should wear clothes like that more often. Instead of the sweatpants and stuff.

She wasn't dressing up for a nineteen-year-old. That was absurd. That was not what she was doing. She was dressing up for herself. She just felt like looking nice today. Women were allowed to dress up for themselves. It had nothing to do with anything anyone had said. It had nothing to do with Damian and his blush and his quiet earnest voice and the way he'd said you look really pretty. It was a coincidence. A choice. Her choice. She was a grown woman and she could wear a skirt if she wanted to and she didn't need to justify it to anyone, not even herself.

She grabbed her purse and headed downstairs. She needed to get to the store and back so she still had time for the rest of her day. Laundry. Paperwork. Maybe a run.

She bought strawberries. She bought more buttermilk and vanilla extract. She bought another bottle of real maple syrup because they were running low — Damian had been generous with the pouring, and the leaf-shaped bottle was already a third empty. She didn't linger in the aisles. She didn't browse. She walked directly to what she needed and put it in her cart and walked out.

At the checkout, the cashier scanned the strawberries and the buttermilk and the syrup and the vanilla. Lindsay paid without looking at the total. She carried the bags to the car and put them in the trunk and closed the lid and stood for a moment in the parking lot with her hand on the cold metal.

She was wearing a skirt. She was wearing heels. She was at the grocery store on a Saturday morning, and she was wearing a skirt and heels and lipstick, and she had just spent thirty-seven dollars on ingredients for waffles that she was going to make tomorrow morning for a boy she had met less than two weeks ago.

She got in the car. She adjusted the rearview mirror. She looked at herself — the lipstick, the hair, the blouse pulling slightly at the buttons.

She drove home.

The strawberries went into the refrigerator. The buttermilk went next to the eggs. The syrup went in the cabinet next to the waffle iron, which was still on the counter where she'd left it, because she hadn't put it away, because she'd be using it again in the morning.

Lindsay was on the living room couch. She was still in her skirt and blouse and heels from this morning. She hadn't changed when she got home from the store. She'd meant to — had walked past her bedroom with the intention of pulling on jeans and a t-shirt — but then the strawberries needed to be put away, and the buttermilk needed to go in the fridge, and the syrup needed to be shelved, and by the time all of that was done she was already in the middle of something else and changing seemed like more effort than it was worth. That was all. Not because she'd caught her reflection in the hallway mirror and thought this looks nice. Not because some part of her was waiting to be seen. She just hadn't gotten around to it.

She was reading something on her phone — an article about staging homes for spring showings, the kind of professional development she read when she wanted to feel productive without actually being productive — when she heard footsteps in the hallway. She looked up.

Damian stopped in the doorway. He was wearing the same sweatpants and t-shirt he'd worn all week, and he was holding a laundry basket against his hip. The basket was piled with clothes — haphazardly, socks spilling over the side, a t-shirt sleeve dangling. He looked at her. He looked at the skirt. He looked at the heels she was still wearing at six o'clock on a Saturday evening.

"Lindsay — wow. That outfit looks really nice. Like, even better than the one yesterday."

The compliment landed in her chest with a small warm pulse. She felt her posture shift — straightening slightly, her shoulders drawing back — before she caught herself and stopped it. Yesterday she'd let that warmth carry her somewhere she didn't want to examine. Today she was going to be more careful.

"Thank you," she said. Her voice was polite but cooler than yesterday, a deliberate dialling-back. "What do you need, Damian?"

He shifted his weight. He looked at the basket, then at the floor, then back at her. The body language of someone who was about to ask for something and felt bad about it before he'd even opened his mouth.

"I was wondering if you could, um, help me with something."

"Help you with what?"

He held up the basket slightly, as if offering it as evidence. "This is kind of embarrassing." He paused. He was looking at the floor again, his shoulders slightly hunched. "But I never really learned how to do laundry. Like, properly. In the foster homes they just had, like, a service that came and picked everything up, or the house parents did it themselves. Nobody ever showed me how the machines work."

Lindsay opened her mouth. She closed it. She wanted to roll her eyes — laundry, really, you're nineteen and you can't figure out a washing machine — but she stopped herself. He was from the system. It was plausible. She'd read about this in the foster care literature she'd skimmed when they were applying: kids who aged out without ever learning to cook or clean or balance a checkbook because no one had ever bothered to teach them. She couldn't assume he was being lazy just because the request was inconvenient. She was his parent now. She'd said so herself. Thursday morning, standing in the kitchen, the words coming out of her mouth before she'd thought about them: I'm your parent now. It's my job to teach you these things.

She'd said it. She'd meant it. Now she had to live up to it.

"Sure," she said, setting her phone down. "Come on."

She got up from the couch. A few moments later they were standing together in the utility room off the kitchen, the small windowless space that held the washer and dryer and a shelf of detergent and fabric softener and stain remover. Damian set his basket on top of the dryer. Lindsay stood in front of the washer, one hand on the lid.

"OK," she said. "Basics. You sort by colour — darks in one load, lights in another, whites separate if you have enough for a full load. If you mix them, the colours can bleed and you'll end up with pink socks. Don't ask me how I know."

Damian nodded, his expression attentive. "Darks and lights. Got it."

She pointed to the detergent dispenser. "Detergent goes in here. You fill to this line for a regular load, a little more if the clothes are especially dirty. Don't overfill it or you'll have suds coming out of the machine. I did that once in college and the laundry room flooded."

"Whoa. OK. Not too much. Got it."

She walked him through the dials — normal cycle for everyday clothes, delicate for anything with lace or thin fabric, heavy duty for towels and jeans. She showed him the water temperature settings, explained that cold water was gentler on colours and hot water was better for whites and heavily soiled things. She was thorough. She was clear. She was good at this part — the explaining, the demonstrating, the breaking down of a complex task into manageable steps. She'd been a teacher for six years and the instincts had never left her.

Damian was nodding along, his brow furrowed slightly in concentration. He looked like he was following. He looked like he was taking mental notes.

"OK," he said when she'd finished. "I think I get it. Sort of. But could you maybe show me? Like, just once?" He gestured at his basket. "Just do a load with my stuff so I can see how you do it? I learn better when I watch."

"Sure."

She reached over and took the basket from him.

She was holding his laundry basket. She had taken it out of his hands. He had asked — could you show me just once — and she had said sure and taken the basket before the sentence was finished, before she'd processed what she was agreeing to, before the word sure had even stopped echoing in the small utility room. She was standing in front of the washing machine with an armful of a nineteen-year-old's dirty clothes, and she had taken the basket from him because he'd asked, because he'd looked at her with that earnest attentive expression, because she was his parent now and it was her job to teach him things.

She closed her eyes for a second. She took a breath. She internally sighed — a long, slow, silent exhale that carried the weight of everything she was not going to say out loud.

Then she opened the lid.

She started sorting his clothes into the machine. They stank. A week's worth of teenage boy — t-shirts that had been slept in and sweatpants that had been worn for multiple days in a row and underwear that she was trying not to look at too closely. The smell was stale and sour and faintly athletic. She held her breath for a moment, then gave up and breathed through her mouth. She loaded the washer, added the detergent — just to the line, the way she'd shown him — selected the normal cycle, cold water, and pressed start. The machine rumbled to life, water already rushing into the drum.

"There," she said, closing the lid. "You see? That's all there is to it. Sort, detergent, dial, start."

Damian was beaming. That wide, unguarded smile, the one that made his whole face look younger. "That's so easy! Thank you so much, Lindsay. You're amazing. Seriously."

"When this cycle is done, you need to move the clothes to the dryer. Can you do that?"

"Definitely." He nodded with conviction. "And then I fold them, right?"

"Right."

"I'll handle it. I promise. Thank you." He was already backing out of the utility room, still smiling. "You're the best."

She nodded. She went back to the couch. She picked up her phone and tried to find the article she'd been reading, scrolling past paragraphs without absorbing them.

She had just done a nineteen-year-old's laundry. She had stood in front of the washing machine and sorted his dirty clothes and added the detergent and pressed the buttons and she had done it because he'd asked her to show him how and she'd said sure instead of watch me do one shirt and then you do the rest. That was what teaching looked like. That was what she'd said she'd do. Teach you these things. She hadn't taught him anything. She'd done it for him while he watched.

She thought about going back to the utility room and waiting for the cycle to finish so she could walk him through the dryer step by step. She thought about calling him down when it was done and making him touch the buttons himself. She thought about being the kind of parent who followed through.

She stayed on the couch.

She was annoyed. She'd been annoyed since the moment she'd taken the basket from his hands, and the annoyance had been simmering quietly ever since, a low background hum beneath the surface of the evening. She wasn't furious — it wasn't that kind of annoyance. It was the kind that came from watching someone fail to do something so basic that you couldn't quite believe they were failing at it, and then doing it for them because it was easier, and then being annoyed at yourself for doing it, and then being annoyed at them for putting you in the position of doing it. A circular annoyance. A feedback loop with no obvious exit.

But it was fine. It wasn't a big deal. He'd said he'd handle the dryer, and maybe he would. Maybe he just needed to be shown the washer once and now he'd do the rest himself. She was probably being unfair. She was probably projecting frustrations from the whole week — the waffles, the job search, the plate on the table — onto a simple, innocent request for laundry help. He was trying. He'd said I'll handle it. He'd meant it. She should give him the benefit of the doubt.

The washer beeped.

Lindsay looked up from her phone. The cycle was done — she could hear the faint slosh of water settling in the drum, the silence that followed the end of the spin cycle. She waited. She was braced for the footsteps, the confused expression, the Lindsay, I think the machine stopped. She was already composing her response — the dryer is the one on the right, the button says START, you can do this — when she heard movement from upstairs. Footsteps on the stairs. Quick footsteps, not hesitant. Damian appeared in the living room doorway less than a minute after the beep.

"Oh, the washer's done," he said. "I heard it beep." He was already moving toward the utility room, not waiting for her, not asking for help. He paused in the doorway and looked back at her. "I got this. You don't have to get up."

Lindsay felt a wave of relief wash through her. Genuine relief, warm and unexpected. He'd heard the beep. He'd come down on his own. He was going to do it himself. Maybe she'd been too hard on him. Maybe he really did just need to be shown once and then he'd take ownership. Maybe this was the beginning of the turnaround — the moment where he started proving her worst assumptions wrong.

She smiled at him. "Good. The dryer's all set — just put it on normal, press start."

"Got it." He disappeared into the utility room.

Lindsay leaned back into the couch cushions. The annoyance was already fading, replaced by something lighter, something like hope. He was trying. That was the important thing. He was trying, and she'd been patient, and maybe the patience was starting to pay off. He'd been in the system his whole life. He'd never had anyone teach him anything. Of course he was behind. Of course he needed more help than Naomi had. It wasn't fair to compare them. He was a good kid — she could see that now, could feel the truth of it settling into her chest like a warm stone. He was a good kid who'd just needed someone to show him how.

She picked up her phone. She actually read a full paragraph of the article this time. She was feeling better. The evening was salvageable.

Footsteps. Coming toward the living room. Slow this time. Hesitant.

Lindsay looked up. Damian was standing in the doorway, one hand on the frame, his expression the same expression he'd worn when he'd asked about the waffles — embarrassed, apologetic, braced for disappointment.

"Um, Lindsay? Could you help me, please?"

The relief evaporated. Something else rushed in to fill the space — a familiar mix of resignation and irritation and the particular exhaustion of being proven right when you'd just convinced yourself you were wrong.

"Help you with what?" Her voice was cautious. She didn't get up.

Damian shifted his weight. He looked at his feet, then at the ceiling, then somewhere over her left shoulder — anywhere but at her face. "I know I said I'd put the clothes in the dryer. And I was going to. I really was. But, well..." He trailed off. His face was reddening.

"But what?"

"The washer is kind of deep. Like, really deep. And I'm not sure I can reach all the way in. It's silly, but..." He paused. He looked at her then, his expression so earnestly embarrassed that it was almost painful to look at. "I'm scared of falling in."

Lindsay stared at him.

He was nineteen years old. He was three inches taller than she was. He had arms that could undoubtedly reach the bottom of any standard washing machine. And he was standing in her living room telling her, with apparent sincerity, that he was scared of falling into the washer. If he hadn't sounded so genuine — if there had been even the faintest trace of a smile, the smallest hint that he was joking — she would have laughed. Or snapped. Or both.

"I can't reach it, Lindsay. I know it sounds stupid. But could you help me out, please?"

"Damian, you're not going to fall into the washing machine. You're taller than—"

"I know, I know. It's just — the angle is weird, and I leaned in and I felt like I was going to tip forward, and I just..." He wrapped his arms around himself, a small self-protective gesture. "I don't know. It freaked me out. Could you just help me? Please?"

Lindsay opened her mouth to say no. She was going to say no. She was going to say Damian, you are a grown man and you can reach into a washing machine, I am not doing this for you, go back in there and try again. The words were right there, arranged in the right order, ready to be spoken.

"Please, Lindsay? It'll take two seconds."

She was standing up. She didn't remember deciding to stand up. Her legs had made the decision without consulting her, and now she was walking toward the utility room, and Damian was following her, and the whole thing was happening exactly the way it had happened with the waffles and the syrup and the bananas and the strawberries — her body moving forward while her mind watched from somewhere far away, a spectator at its own life.

She stopped in front of the washing machine. The drum was full of damp clothes — his clothes, his t-shirts and sweatpants and socks, the same ones she'd loaded in an hour ago. She leaned over the edge. The bottom of the drum was maybe two feet down. She could reach it easily. Damian could have reached it easily if he'd bent at the waist instead of whatever bizarre angle he'd apparently attempted.

She reached in and started transferring the clothes to the dryer. Damp cotton, warm from the spin cycle, heavy in her hands. She moved in mechanical handfuls — shirt, pants, socks, underwear — filling the dryer drum while Damian watched from the doorway.

"Thank you so much, Lindsay. I'm sorry. I don't know why it freaked me out. I just leaned in and I felt like I was going to lose my balance and I panicked."

"It's fine." Her voice was flat. She was not looking at him. She was stuffing the last of the socks into the dryer and trying to remember why she hadn't just said no.

For God's sake, he was taller than she was. He had longer arms. If anyone was at risk of "falling in" to the washing machine, it was her — she had to lean further, stretch deeper, balance on the balls of her feet to reach the clothes at the very bottom. The absurdity of it was so complete that she couldn't even find the energy to be angry. She was just tired. Tired and damp-sleeved and standing in the utility room with a nineteen-year-old who was afraid of appliances.

She closed the dryer door. She selected the cycle. She pressed start. The machine rumbled to life.

"There," she said. "When it's done, you can handle the rest yourself. The folding and putting away. Right?"

"Right. Definitely. I'll handle it."

She nodded. She went back to the couch. She picked up her phone. She didn't read anything. She just held it and stared at the screen and waited for the dryer to finish and the next set of footsteps.

The dryer buzzed an hour later. Lindsay didn't move. She heard Damian's footsteps on the stairs, heard him go into the utility room, heard the dryer door open. She braced herself. She waited. The sounds from the utility room were the sounds of someone moving clothes into a basket — a muffled rustling, the soft thump of fabric being transferred. That was all. No confused questions. No calls for help. Maybe this part, at least, he could manage on his own.

Then the footsteps again, but not going upstairs. Coming toward her.

Damian appeared in the living room doorway. He was holding the laundry basket, now full of clean, dry clothes. The basket was pressed against his hip, the way it had been when he'd first brought it down.

"Lindsay? I got the clothes out of the dryer. They're all dry and everything."

"I can see that. Good job." She waited. She knew what was coming.

"It's just — I was wondering if you could teach me how to fold them? Like you said you would? I want to make sure I do it right."

Teach. The word again. He wanted her to teach him. Not to do it for him — to show him, once, and then let him do the rest. That was what she'd promised. That was what a good mother did. She could do this the right way this time — demonstrate each item, make him replicate it, leave when he'd proven he could do it himself. She wouldn't fall into the same trap. She wouldn't end up folding everything while he watched.

"Fine," she said, standing up. "Bring the basket upstairs."

They went to his room. Lindsay sat on the edge of his bed. Damian set the basket next to her and stood waiting, his hands at his sides, his posture attentive and expectant.

"OK," she said. "Folding. I'm going to show you each type of item once. Then you're going to do the rest yourself. Understood?"

"Understood."

She took out a t-shirt. She demonstrated — sleeves in, bottom up, smooth it flat, a neat rectangle. She handed it to him and watched him put it on the bed. Then she did the same with a pair of sweatpants. A pair of socks, rolled together. A pair of underwear, folded in half and then half again. She narrated each step clearly, the way she'd narrated lessons in her classroom, breaking the process down into manageable pieces.

"That's all the different types," she said. "Now you try."

She handed him a t-shirt. He took it — carefully, almost reverently — and laid it flat on the bed. He folded the sleeves in. He folded the bottom up. He smoothed it with his palm. The result was slightly crooked, one sleeve sticking out at a slightly different angle than the other, but it was recognizably a folded shirt. It was better than the lopsided crumple he'd produced in her imagination.

"There," he said, holding it up. "Is that right?"

Lindsay examined it. It wasn't perfect. It was, however, a genuine attempt — not a helpless fumble, not a strategic failure designed to make her take over. He'd listened. He'd followed the steps. He'd produced something that was, if not exactly right, at least close enough.

"Good," she said. "See? You can do it." She stood up from the bed. "I'll leave the rest to you. You've got this."

She was already moving toward the door. She was going to leave. She was going to walk out of his room and go downstairs and sit on the couch and read her article and let him finish his own laundry for the first time all evening. The plan was working. The teaching was working. She'd shown him and he'd done it and now she was leaving.

"Wait!"

She froze. Her hand was on the doorframe. Her back was to him. She didn't turn around.

Please don't ask me to do it. Please don't ask me to do it. Just put the clothes away. It's not hard. You just put them in the drawer.

"What is it, Damian?" Her voice was careful, controlled, giving nothing away.

"Um... I just wanted to say thank you. For all your help." His voice was quiet, sincere. "You're really patient. I know I'm probably frustrating to deal with."

The tension in her shoulders loosened. A thank-you. That was all. He wasn't asking for more. He was just saying thank you. She'd been braced for another request and it was just a thank-you, just a polite, genuine expression of gratitude, and she felt a small pulse of warmth toward him despite everything.

"You're welcome. Goodnight, Damian."

She started to turn.

"But, um, since you're here..." His voice trailed off, then came back, tentative and apologetic. "I was still confused about the whole process? Like, I know how to fold one shirt now. But what do I do after that? Do I put it away directly, one at a time? Or do I make piles of everything and then put them away all at once? I don't know what the — the usual way is. Like, what normal people do."

Lindsay closed her eyes. She was still facing the door. If she turned around, she knew what would happen. She'd been here before — maybe not in this exact room, with this exact question, but in this exact dynamic. He was asking about process. He was asking a reasonable follow-up question that any student might ask. She couldn't refuse to answer a question about process. She couldn't say figure it out yourself when he was looking at her with that earnest, slightly anxious expression and asking her what normal people did.

"Could you walk me through the full process one time? Just one time, from start to finish, so I can see the whole thing together? Then I'll know for next time."

He was asking for one time. One complete demonstration. The same way he'd asked for one waffle breakfast. The same way he'd asked for one more day on the job search. The same way he'd asked for one more thing every single day this week, and every single time she'd said sure and then the one time had become the new normal.

She should say no. She should say you have all the pieces, you can figure out the order yourself, that's part of learning. She should walk out of the room.

She turned around.

"OK. One time. Watch carefully."

She walked back to the bed. She sat down. She took a shirt from the basket — one of the ones she'd already folded in her demonstration — and placed it on the bed. "You make piles first," she said. "Shirts in one pile, pants in another, socks together, underwear together. That way everything's organized before you start putting it away."

She reached into the basket and pulled out another shirt. She folded it. She placed it on top of the first one. "Then once everything is folded and in piles, you put the piles away — shirts in the shirt drawer, pants in the pants drawer, socks and underwear wherever they go. That's it. That's the whole process."

She reached for the next shirt.

Wait. Why was she reaching for the next shirt? She was supposed to be showing him the process. She'd explained the piles. She'd folded one shirt to demonstrate. She should be handing him the basket now and saying your turn. She should be—

Her hands were already moving. Shirt. Fold. Stack. Shirt. Fold. Stack. She was doing it. She was doing it again, the exact thing she'd sworn she wouldn't do, the exact thing she'd done with the washing machine and the dryer and every waffle breakfast she'd made since Tuesday. She was folding his laundry while he watched, and she couldn't stop, because stopping would mean looking at him and admitting that she'd lost control of the situation, and she wasn't ready to do that.

Ugh. Fine. One time, she thought bitterly, and kept folding.

She folded the rest of the t-shirts. She folded the sweatpants. She folded the socks, matching them into pairs, balling them together the way she'd done for Greg before she'd stopped doing Greg's laundry. She folded the underwear — his underwear — quickly and without looking at it too closely. She stacked everything into neat piles on his bed. Shirts in one pile. Pants in another. Socks and underwear in a third.

"There," she said. "Now you put them in your drawers. You can handle that part yourself."

She didn't wait for him to answer. She stood up and walked out of his room and went downstairs and sat on the couch and picked up her phone and stared at the screen.

She was fairly certain that "teaching" was the wrong word for what had just happened. She had folded one shirt in front of him. She had folded seventeen other items by herself. He had watched her do it, sitting on his bed with his legs crossed, looking grateful and slightly attentive, and she had done it because he'd asked her to walk him through the full process one time and she couldn't find a reason to say no that didn't make her sound petty. What do I do after folding one shirt? A legitimate question. A reasonable question. She couldn't scold him for asking reasonable questions. She couldn't tell him to figure it out himself when he was looking at her with that hopeful expression and saying I want to learn the normal way.

But she also couldn't pretend anymore that this was teaching. Teaching required the student to do the work. She had done the work. She had done all of the work — the sorting, the washing, the transferring, the drying, the folding, the stacking — while calling it a lesson, while telling herself she was being a good mother, while he sat on his bed and nodded along. A good mother taught her children to do things for themselves. A good mother didn't fold a grown man's underwear while he watched.

She didn't remember Naomi being this helpless at nineteen. Naomi had been doing her own laundry since she was twelve — Lindsay had stood in the utility room and walked her through the dials exactly once, and after that it had been Naomi's responsibility. She'd done it without complaint or confusion. She'd figured out the dryer and the folding and the putting away without a single follow-up question. The next day, Lindsay had found her clothes neatly stacked in her drawers, and that had been that. Naomi at twelve had been more competent than Damian at nineteen. Naomi at nine had been more competent than Damian at nineteen. At nine she'd been making her own sandwiches and packing her own backpack and reminding Lindsay about permission slips.

Lindsay set her phone down. The article was still open. She hadn't read a word of it.

She went to bed.