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.
