I held it out to her.
She took my hand instead of the key.
She closed my fingers around it, one by one. Her hand was thin and dry and cool. She held on.
“Not yet,” she said. “Come back on Saturday. Eleven o’clock.”
“Do you need me to clean after the movers?”
“No.” She let go of my hand. “And leave your supplies at home.”
I must have looked confused. Because she looked at me over her reading glasses, the way she
did that very first day, and said:
“I’m asking you to visit, Carly.”
I didn’t know what to wear.
That sounds silly. But I stood in front of my closet on Saturday morning for twenty minutes. Every pair of pants I owned had bleach spots on them. Every shirt was a T-shirt, or a sweatshirt, or the purple polo I wore to the dentist’s office.
Finally I found a pair of dark jeans in the back of the closet that I’d bought for Willa’s junior year art show and never worn again. No bleach spots. And a blouse, pale blue, with little white flowers. I only wore it to school events. Parent-teacher conferences. Awards nights.
