“Let me check”, I said. I stood there in the rain, holding my phone, and counted to five. “Yes. I have Thursdays open.”
“GOOD. Could you come tomorrow at ten o’clock? So we can meet. And so you can see the house.”
“Of course.”
“You’re crying”, she said.
I froze. I hadn’t made any noise. At least, I didn’t think I did.
“I’m sorry?”
“Everything is fine. 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 in the car. Willa was in the back seat with her library book
open on her lap. She was looking at me through the window.
“Who was it?” she asked.
“A lady”, I said. I wiped my face with the back of my hand. “I think it could be our first real job.”
“Is she nice?”
I thought about the clean voice. You cry. She hadn’t asked why. She hadn’t said Oh, poor creature. She just noticed it, said it 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 in.
It was old, from the 1920s, with a large porch and white columns and a blue front door with a pineapple-shaped brass knocker. There was a large oak tree in the front yard and a garden along the side with roses cut for the winter.
Mrs. Whitaker opened the door before I could knock.
She was then
around seventy years old. Small and straight, with short white hair and reading glasses on a thin silver chain. She wore gray pants and a navy cardigan with pearl buttons. She looked like a librarian, a judge, or someone’s very strict grandmother.
She looked me up and down. I was wearing my cleanest jeans and a sweater I had bought at the thrift store the week before. My hair was pulled back in a ponytail. I put on mascara and then took it off, because I was afraid I would cry again and it would leak.
