At noon, I was hungry. I had made a peanut butter sandwich and an apple. I looked around this large, beautiful kitchen with its checkered floor and round table by the window.
Then I went out and ate my sandwich in my car.
It didn’t seem right to eat in his kitchen. It was his kitchen. I was the cleaner. I didn’t want her to come home and find crumbs, or think I was getting too comfortable. So I sat in the front seat of my old Honda with the engine off, ate
my sandwich and looked at the oak tree.
I did this every Thursday for eight years.
Mrs. Whitaker came home at 1:15 p.m. that first day. She walked slowly through the house. I followed her. She didn’t say anything. She ran a finger along the top of the piano. She looked into the bathroom upstairs. She opened the oven.
She stood for a long time looking in the oven.
Then she closed it and turned around.
“Thanks, Carly”, she said.
That was all. But she said it in a way that made me stand up a little straighter the whole way home.
During the first year we barely spoke.
I came every Thursday at nine o’clock. She was usually gone. There was always a note on the counter, on the same thick cream paper, in the same perfect cursive. And there was always a check, made payable to
