After everyone left, she stood at the sink and I dried, and she said, without turning around:
“Rachel. Your sister wrote to me.”
I stopped drying.
“From where?”
“From where they keep her. Eighteen months. She’ll be out next spring.”
“What did she want?”
“She asked if I’d hire her.”
I set the plate down.
“What did you say?”
Dorothy turned off the water.
She dried her hands on the towel.
She looked at me with the eyes that examine what you’d rather keep quiet.
“I haven’t said anything yet,” she said.
“I thought I’d ask the woman who keeps my books.”
I looked at my father’s watch.
7:42.
On time.
I thought about a bus stop and seventy-five dollars and a woman who’d been where I was and handed me a slip of paper instead of a lecture.
I thought about an envelope on the grass that I’d never picked up.
