We filled out the financial aid forms together at the kitchen table. Willa applied for every scholarship she could find. She wrote essays until two in the morning. I picked up two more cleaning jobs on Saturdays. I stopped buying coffee at the gas station. I told myself we’d figure
it out. Loans. Grants. Something.
I didn’t tell Mrs. Whitaker any of this. It wasn’t her business. I was her cleaner.
But she asked about Willa every Thursday. And one Thursday, in September of Willa’s senior year,
she asked me where Willa was applying to college.
I told her.
“Architecture,” Mrs. Whitaker said. She nodded slowly. “Of course. The windows.”
“The windows,” I agreed.
She didn’t ask me how we were going to pay for it. And I didn’t say.
Three weeks later, she told me she was moving.
It was a Thursday in October. I had just finished the upstairs. I came down the stairs with my bucket, and Mrs. Whitaker was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, and she said, “Carly, would you sit down for a moment?”
