At forty-one, she lived alone in an old two-story house outside the city, surrounded by maple trees and a garden she cared for with almost unreasonable devotion.
“It’s six weeks,” she told me over the phone. “I have an empty room. You’ll keep the place from feeling like a museum.”
It sounded simple.
It stopped feeling simple the moment she opened the front door.
Michelle stood barefoot on the hardwood floor, one hand wrapped around a glass of iced tea. Her dark hair had been twisted into a loose braid over one shoulder, and she wore faded jeans and a sleeveless white blouse.
For a second, she simply stared.
Then her mouth curved.
“Well,” she said. “College changed you.”
I laughed awkwardly. “Hopefully for the better.”
Her eyes moved over me—not dramatically, not obviously, but slowly enough that I noticed.
“You got taller.”
“I was already tall.”
