“Eight hundred,” I said.
“A one-bedroom at the apartments out by the highway is seven seventy-five,” Todd said. He said it to the salt shaker. He wouldn’t look at me. “We looked it up. So it’s fair. It’s right at fair.”
“And you’d have family,” Michelle said. “You wouldn’t be by yourself out there anymore.”
I am sixty-seven years old. My Social Security check, the one I draw now as Dale’s widow, comes to $1,640 a month. I kept the books at the lumber yard for twenty-two years, so I did not need a pencil for this. Eight hundred from sixteen forty left me eight hundred and forty dollars. For my car insurance. My Medicare supplement. My gas. My pills. My tithe. And Christmas for two grandchildren.
And for that, I would be the hired girl in my own daughter’s house, four days out of seven.
