the way you’d tell someone the time. “The house is too big for one person. But I’m too stubborn to leave it.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said. And I meant it.
“It’s a lot of dust,” she said. “That’s what it is.”
We ended up back in the kitchen. She sat down at the small round table by the window. She didn’t ask me to sit. So I stood.
“I’ll pay you a hundred dollars a week,” she said. “Every Thursday, nine to two. I’ll leave a check on the counter. If you need supplies, tell me and I’ll buy them, or buy them yourself and leave me the receipt.”
A hundred dollars a week. Four hundred dollars a month. I did the math in my head standing there. It wasn’t enough to live on. But it was enough to pay the electric bill and buy groceries. It was a start.
“That sounds wonderful,” I said.
“You’ll have a key. I’m often out on Thursdays. I play bridge. I volunteer at the hospital gift shop.” She reached into a drawer and took out a single brass key on a plain ring. She held it out to me.
“Don’t lose it.”
I took it. It felt heavy in my hand. Heavier than a key should feel.
“You don’t know me,” I said before I could stop myself. “You’re just giving me a key?”
She looked at me over her reading glasses.
“I called your references,” she said. “Your old boss at the dental office said you once drove forty minutes to return a patient’s wallet he’d left in the waiting room. Your neighbor said you watched her dog for two weeks and wouldn’t take any money.” She folded her hands on the table. “And
you cried in a parking lot and apologized for it. People who are going to steal from you don’t usually apologize for crying.”
I didn’t know what to say. So I said, “Thank you, Mrs. Whitaker.”
“Thursday,” she said. “Nine o’clock.”
That first Thursday, I was so nervous I got there at 8:40 and sat in my car at the curb for twenty minutes so I wouldn’t be early.
Mrs. Whitaker had left a note on the kitchen counter. It was written on thick cream-colored paper in perfect cursive.
