I didn’t say anything. I let her say it.
“I was so scared,” she said. Her voice was very quiet. “Of ending up like my mother. In a room that smelled like bleach, with nobody coming. I thought if I paid for a piece of it, nobody could ever make me leave.” She laughed a little, brokenly. “And I ended up in Karen’s basement next to a deep freezer.”
“I’m sorry about the basement.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No,” I admitted. “Not entirely.”
And for the first time in thirteen years, Diane Mercer laughed at something I said.
Then she pushed the long shopping bag across the table toward me.
“I don’t expect you to use them,” she said. “I just. I’d already measured. It seemed a shame to waste it.”
I opened the bag.
Curtains.
Cream-colored linen. Lined. Hand-hemmed. Little pleats at the top, perfectly even. She’d made them herself. I could tell by the stitching.
