"Then don't think. Just don't forbid it."
"I don't forbid pie," he said, and hung up before either of them could ruin the sentence.
She waited twelve days before she drove to Orchard Street. She chose a Tuesday morning, when Lydia would be back in Cincinnati packing a second load, so that she could not use her sister as a buffer. Ruth opened the door in a work shirt and old trousers, dirt on one knee. They stood on either side of the threshold like people who had been neighbors in a formal sense and family in an unacknowledged one.
"I am not here to measure," Helen said. "I may do it anyway. I'm telling you so you can throw me out if you see it happening."