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The photograph is of a piece of construction paper covered in what appears to be brown handprints. Small ones. Fingers splayed wide, the paint gone thick and gloppy at the palms where he must have pressed too hard. I have no idea what they’re supposed to be. The picture is attached to the stainless steel door of my refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a candy cane.

I zoom in.

There are two more pieces of paper behind it.

There were not things stuck to my refrigerator when I left.

I’m certain of this. I bought that refrigerator specifically because nothing sticks to it. Clean lines. Brushed steel. No clutter. The kitchen designer called it “serene,” and I paid her a great deal of money to make it that way.

I wait until I’m inside the building, and then I text Noelle.

Me: Why is there paper on my refrigerator?

Her response arrives thirty seconds later.

Noelle: Because that’s where refrigerator art goes.

Me: It’s a Sub-Zero.

Noelle: Congratulations.

I stare at the message. Then another appears.

Noelle: Does that mean the art freezes faster?

I laugh. Actually laugh. It comes out of me before I can stop it, short and loud, and it bounces off the glass walls of the forty-second-floor conference room I’ve been sitting in since the car dropped me off.

The man sitting across the conference table stops talking. He’s the general contractor, a broad, red-faced man named Doug Pruitt, who has spent the last twenty minutes explaining why the Lakeshore project is six weeks behind schedule and why none of it is his fault.

Six other people look at me. Coffee cups frozen halfway to mouths. Somebody’s pen stops tapping.

I clear my throat. “Continue.”

He does.

I put my phone face down on the polished walnut table, right next to the binder of change orders I haven’t opened.

It buzzes again. The vibration hums against the wood. Small. Insistent.

I don’t touch it.

For almost thirty seconds.

Then I flip it over beneath the edge of the table.

Like a teenager. Like I’m sixteen and hiding my phone from a chemistry teacher instead of thirty-nine and paying for this room.

Noelle: They’re reindeer, by the way.

I look at the picture again.

They don’t look like reindeer.

They look like someone dropped globs of brown paint and then tried to press their hands into it.

Me: Are you sure?

Noelle: Don’t say that to Shiloh.