Mom is still in bed when I go in to check on her the next morning. I’ve made French toast, which I know she can’t resist. Fresh-squeezed orange juice too. “Time to get up,” I say, placing the tray on Mom’s bed. “Rise and shine!” I go over to the window and open the blinds.

Mom squints at the sunlight streaming through the slats. “Later, Kit-Kat. I’m not hungry.”

“Come on, Mom. You’ve got to have something.” I hand her the juice.

Mom pushes it away. “Later,” she says again. “Please close the blinds.”

“Mom, I don’t think—”

“Close them, Kat.”

I do as Mom says, but I leave the juice and French toast on her nightstand.

I’m carrying the tray back to the kitchen when I hear my phone ring. I run to my room to get it. It’s Dad. But this time, I can’t tell more lies. I burst into tears.

“Take a deep breath,” Dad tells me. “In through the nose, out through the mouth. Breathe. Breathe….”

In between sobby gulps, I tell Dad what’s happening.

“I’ll be right there,” he says.

I go back to Mom’s room and sit on the edge of her bed. I take her hand in mine. Her fingers are redder than ever, and rough as a cat’s tongue. When I was little, I never gave her hands much thought. Not when she rubbed my back at bedtime, or braided my hair before school. Or when she put bubbles in my bath, or tied my sneakers at the playground. She was a regular mom who took me to the library for story time and to my friends’ houses for playdates and birthday parties. Dad did that stuff too, but it was Mom who knew which books I liked and how to wrap presents with fancy paper and ribbon. Back then, she didn’t take her cleaning so…seriously.

I give Mom’s hand a kiss and put it up to my cheek. I keep it there until the doorbell rings. Then I’m out like a flash. I unbolt the door and go boneless in Dad’s arms. The tiny buttons on his shirt poke against my face, but I don’t care. It feels good to have him here, holding me tight.

Dad untangles himself and drops his jacket on a chair. “Where’s your mother?”

I lead him to the bedroom where Mom is still sleeping. We stand over the bed, watching her chest rise and fall as she breathes. After a few minutes Dad motions for me to follow him to the kitchen. He grabs two cans of raspberry seltzer from the refrigerator and sits down at the breakfast bar. He points to the stool next to him. “Sit,” he says.

I sit. Then I do what I should have done, long before now.

I tell Dad the whole truth.

I tell him how Mom cleans the apartment, day after day—and how she washes her hands until her fingers are raw. How she embarrasses me by wiping down cans at the supermarket, in her stupid overalls and that red bandanna. How she wears latex gloves, and makes me wear them too.

I tell him how she packed up her wedding china to give to charity, and how she wanted to trash my flea-market rug. How she almost knocked me over in a Snapple-cap tug-of-war, but later apologized and promised to change. And how I worry she never will.

The biggest worry of all, I tell him? That Mom’s behavior will only get worse. Which scares me more than anything else. More than keeping secrets, even.

So now Dad knows.

Finally.

I pick up my seltzer and take a big gulp. Dad watches me, frowning. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner, sweetheart? I would’ve done something to help.”

“Like what?” I say, choking on the seltzer fizz. “Hide Mom’s vacuum cleaner? Take away her rubber gloves?”

“That’s not funny, Kat.”

“I’m not trying to be,” I say. Dad is blaming me for not telling him sooner, but it’s not my fault he didn’t know. All he had to do was ask. Or even better, open his eyes and look.

Dad takes my hand. “Your mom’s had a thing about germs for as long as I’ve known her, Kit-Kat. It wasn’t this serious, and it never took over her life the way you’re describing now.” He pauses. “I tried talking to her about it—many times—but she always said the same thing: that I was making a mountain out of a molehill. After a while it was easier to believe her.”

I know what Dad means. Mom said I was making a fuss over nothing too. “Does that mean she has OCD?” I ask, naming Mom’s problem for the first time to someone other than Olympia.

Dad nods slowly. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure it does.”

We sit with this information for a minute, neither one of us saying anything. Finally Dad puts his arm around me. “I wish I could’ve done more to help you and your mom, honey. I really am sorry.”

I lean in for a hug. “That’s okay, Dad. You can help us now.”

“I will,” he says. “Promise.”

I hope it’s a promise he can keep.

—

Dad doesn’t go home that night. He sleeps on the sofa, getting up every few hours to check in on Mom. I can hear him bumping around in the dark, trying to find his way around the once-familiar apartment. He’s still there the next morning when I wander into the kitchen. “Why didn’t you wake me?” I ask, glancing at the wall clock. “I’m late for school.”

“You’re not going to school today,” Dad tells me. He pours coffee into a mug and sits down at the breakfast bar.

“But it’s Monday,” I say, grabbing a muffin from the box on the counter. “I already missed a day for Clean Sweep.”

After Dad promises I won’t get in trouble, he tells me to sit down. I don’t have to be psychic to know when bad news is coming. “I want you to come stay with Barbara and me,” he says, taking a sip of his coffee. “At least until your mom gets back on her feet.”

I feel my throat tighten. “I can’t leave Mom. She needs me.”

“She needs to get better, Kit-Kat. And she needs to do it alone.”

“What do you mean?”

Dad puts down his mug. “Your mom and I talked earlier this morning. She admitted that her problem—her OCD—is getting worse, and she agreed to seek therapy.”

“Oh.” I’m glad Mom wants to get help, and I’ll bet Olympia will be almost as happy as I am. But I don’t understand why I have to move in with Dad. Unless, of course, Mom is going to a mental hospital like Beth Ellen Hansen’s mother in Harriet the Spy. But Beth Ellen’s mother wasn’t really in a mental hospital. She was “at Biarritz,” a ski resort in Switzerland. Does that mean Mom won’t be going to one either? I decide to find out anyway—just to be on the safe side.

“Will Mom have to go to a mental hospital?” I ask.

Dad seems surprised by my question. “What would give you that idea?”

“Just something I read,” I say. “I know it’s silly.”

“There’s no such thing as a silly question,” Dad says. “But no, your mom is not going to a mental hospital. She’ll receive outpatient treatment, right here in New York. It’s a six-week program, five days a week. Some weekends too.”

“Could I stay home with Mom, then?”

“No,” Dad says, smiling slightly. “But it wasn’t silly to ask.”