“You’re crying,” she said.
I froze. I hadn’t made a sound. At least, I didn’t think I had.
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s all right. It’s raining, too. I can hear it.” There was a short pause. “Ten o’clock tomorrow. 418
Linden. The blue door.”
She hung up.
I got into the car. Willa was in the back seat with her library book open on her knees. She had
been watching me through the window.
“Who was that?” she asked.
“A lady,” I said. I wiped my face with the back of my hand. “I think she might be our first real job.”
“Is she nice?”
I thought about the crisp voice. You’re crying. She hadn’t asked why. She hadn’t said oh, you poor thing. She just noticed, and said so, and moved on.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I think maybe.”
The house on Linden Street was the biggest house I had ever been inside.
It was old, from the 1920s, with a wide front porch and white columns and a blue front door with a brass knocker shaped like a pineapple. There was a big oak tree in the front yard and a garden
along the side with roses that had been cut back for winter.
Mrs. Whitaker opened the door before I could knock.
She was about seventy then. Small and straight-backed, with short white hair and reading glasses
on a thin silver chain. She was wearing gray slacks and a navy cardigan with pearl buttons. She looked like a librarian, or a judge, or somebody’s very strict grandmother.
She looked me up and down. I was wearing my cleanest jeans and a sweater I’d bought at the
thrift store the week before. I had my hair pulled back in a ponytail. I’d put on mascara, and then taken it off, because I was afraid I’d cry again and it would run.
“Come in, Carly,” she said.
She showed me the house. The long front hall with the wooden floors. The living room with the fireplace and the big piano nobody played. The formal dining room with a table long enough for
twelve people. The kitchen, which was huge and old-fashioned, with white cabinets and a black-and-white checkered floor. The four bedrooms upstairs. The three bathrooms, one with a claw-foot tub.
“My husband and I bought this house in 1971,” she said as we walked. “We raised our daughter here. Susan. She lives in Oregon now. My husband passed away two years ago.” She said it simply,
