Linden. The blue door.”
She hung up.
I got into the car. Willa was in the back seat with her library book open on her knees. She had
been watching me through the window.
“Who was that?” she asked.
“A lady,” I said. I wiped my face with the back of my hand. “I think she might be our first real job.”
“Is she nice?”
I thought about the crisp voice. You’re crying. She hadn’t asked why. She hadn’t said oh, you poor thing. She just noticed, and said so, and moved on.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I think maybe.”
The house on Linden Street was the biggest house I had ever been inside.
It was old, from the 1920s, with a wide front porch and white columns and a blue front door with a brass knocker shaped like a pineapple. There was a big oak tree in the front yard and a garden
along the side with roses that had been cut back for winter.
Mrs. Whitaker opened the door before I could knock.
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.
