That Thursday, I must have looked terrible. Mrs. Whitaker was home. She came into the kitchen
while I was mopping the checkered floor.
“Is Willa all right?” she asked.
I stopped mopping. I hadn’t told her anything. “How did you know something happened?”
“You’ve mopped that same square three times,” she said.
I looked down. She was right.
So I told her. Not everything. Just that Willa had asthma, and we’d been to the ER, and she was
okay now, and they gave her an inhaler.
Mrs. Whitaker listened. She nodded. She didn’t say oh, you poor thing. She didn’t offer me money. I think she knew I wouldn’t have taken it.
She just said, “I’m glad she’s all right.”
And then she said, “Carly, you’ve been working here three years. You can call me Margaret.”
“I don’t think I can,” I said. And I meant it. I don’t know why. It just felt wrong. Like calling your old
kindergarten teacher by her first name.
She almost smiled. “All right,” she said. “Mrs. Whitaker it is.”
The next Thursday, there was a check on the counter for one hundred and twenty-five dollars
