In the spring of 2022 Evelyn slipped on the back steps carrying a tray of seedlings and broke her wrist. The bone was not dramatic. The helplessness was. She could not open jars. She could not manage the buttons on her left cuff. She hated being watched in the attempt. Ruth, who had been spending most nights in the blue bedroom by then — the room that had been Helen's and had been repainted a color Evelyn called "a decent blue" — did not make a speech about moving in. She moved in. She learned the trick of the sticky drawer. She paid for a new boiler with money from her own pension when the old one failed in January and Mark, on the phone, said he would get to it after a closing. The closing moved. The house got cold. Ruth called the company herself and did not mention the call until the heat was back and Evelyn was asleep in a chair with her wrist on a pillow. In the morning she said only, "It's handled." Evelyn looked at her for a long time. "You should not have had to." "I know," Ruth said. "I wanted the morning to be warm. That is not the same as should."
Helen found out about the boiler from a credit-card statement Evelyn had left on the counter, not to accuse anyone, only because Evelyn filed papers by leaving them where she could see them. Helen's face did a small, controlled thing. "We would have paid," she said.
"You would have discussed paying," Evelyn said. "There is a difference. The pipes do not attend discussions."
"You let a stranger put money into this house."
Ruth was in the next room and could hear them. She stayed there. Evelyn lowered her voice without lowering the words. "She is not a stranger. And it is not your house yet."