The Best Kind of People by Zoe Whittall

before, she unwrapped the towel, hung it limply on a stool, and shook out her hair while it slipped to the floor. She didn’t retrieve it before pouring herself a cup of coffee. She stared at the towel, tasted the coffee, and winced. Someone had been up earlier and left it for her, but it was stronger than she liked. A white mould was beginning to blanket the raspberries on the counter. She tore open a packet of sweetener and threw it in the garbage without using it.
    If George was guilty, and she was far from convinced, then he could be sick. She took a sip of black coffee and contemplated this. She understood sick. Everyone is generally pleased to reduce a complicated situation to the notion of evil. Or a typical sleazeball man . He’s just evil.
    Evil is a word that’s lost its meaning recently, like bully . Overused, and weakened.
    She dissolved an antacid tablet in a glass of water. If it’s a sickness, it would not be his fault. There could be an undiagnosed tumour in his orbitofrontal lobe, causing him to have no control over his impulses. She grabbed a pen from the cup beside the phone and drew a sketch of a brain on a scrap of paper. She should call Bennie and suggest an MRI . She could choose to have compassion . Maybe this is a lesson from god, to see how much compassion I can have! She stood up at this revelation and drank the fizzing water down. Then she sat down again on one of the tall bar stools at the kitchen island. Every time she was sitting, it seemed impossible to imagine standing. She wrote Sick??? next to the brain doodle. She’d ask Clara what she thought of this possibility when she woke up.
    Joan was staring down the hall at the front door when she was startled by the click of the back door opening. Sadie and Jimmy emerged wet from a swim, much like other mornings, only they weren’t joking around or smiling. Joan’s eyes flooded with tears when she saw them.
    “Oh, shit, Mom. You look so awful,” Sadie said as Joan embraced her and pulled away to look at her. Joan brushed a strand of hair away from her daughter’s face and placed it behind her ear. “There are still reporters out there …”
    “I know, don’t talk to them.”
    “I didn’t.”
    “I’ll make you guys breakfast,” Joan said, taking a deep breath and turning to busy herself in the fridge. The date walnut muffins George had baked the day before sat on a plate wrapped in saran. Sadie leaned against the island, playing with her phone, while Jimmy ducked upstairs to change.
    “It’s okay, Mom. I went for an early run, and just felt like … jumping in the lake. It feels weird to be here.”
    Joan hadn’t even realized that school had started and that that was where her daughter should be.
    “I cleaned up your room,” Joan said. “I stayed up late last night organizing everything again. There are a lot of things the police still have.” Joan remembered the man in an ugly green shirt pulling the portraits off the wall and throwing them in a plastic tub.
    “Thanks,” Sadie said, leaning over to fill her water bottle from the sink.
    “You should eat.”
    “I’m not hungry.”
    “You need some protein after exercising,” she said, grabbing a small container of cottage cheese from the fridge door and peeling back the foil. Mothering, like nursing, can be performed methodically, a habitual ability to put one’s own needs last, and that erasure of herself was a balm to Joan in this moment. If she could get her daughter to eat, that would soothe Joan.
    “I saw Amanda this morning. Apparently her sister is one of the girls …” Sadie paused to eat a spoonful of cottage cheese.
    Joan froze in front of the toaster, holding two floppy pieces of multigrain bread. She bowed her head. Then she put the bread into the toaster as though she hadn’t heard correctly.
    “That can’t be possible. She is, what, twelve years old? For god’s sake, Sadie. This just can’t be true .”
    “She just turned fourteen. But if