Vera slept. The phone was on the table in case Ruth called late, which she sometimes did. Late calls from a sister were welcome. Late calls from a car had been the old life. The old life was in a drawer. The drawer stuck and she left it stuck. Morning would be tea. The plant would need water. The boy would send a drawing or not. Either was fine. Fine was a word the parlor had not offered. She had built fine afterward, out of salt and routes and a sentence. Then you can leave now. She had meant it. It had happened. The years after were not taken. She pulled the blanket up. The blanket was enough. The casket was not in the house. The coat was not in the row. The row was a story with an ending. The ending was a door sighing shut and a woman by the wood who had asked how long and had been answered and had not died of the answer. She had gone home. Home was the win. She stayed in it.
In the morning the tea was hot and the step was wet from a hose she had left running a minute too long. She turned the hose off. Off was a skill. The plant drank. A neighbor waved. She waved. The wave was a town that did not get the story. She did not hand the story over the fence. Fences were for plants and weather. The story stayed in the parlor where it had been spoken and in the kitchen where it had been survived. Keisha called to say the boy had a cough. Vera said bring him if you need. Need was a door that opened the right way. They did not need, as it turned out. The cough was small. Small was fine. Vera hung up and finished the tea. Eleven years were a number she could say. The number did not sit in the chair. The chair was empty or it was Ruth’s. Today it was empty and honest. She left it. She washed the cup. The day was hers. No one was coming to claim a Sunday she had not donated. She had stopped donating them. That was the sentence after the sentence. Leave, she had said. And then she had stayed. Staying was the longer work. She was still in it. The work looked like a hose and a wave and a cup in a rack. She could do that work. She did it every ordinary morning, which was the only revenge she wanted, and it was not revenge. It was a house. Keisha would come later with the boy or she would not. Either was a full day. Nadine would not come. That absence was ordered and kept. The lilies were gone. The wood of the casket was not her table. Her table had a cup and a salt and a window on a street she had chosen. She sat down. She stayed.