"Yes?" said his mother, in a voice so neutral it could have been used to calibrate scientific instruments.
"She goes by Delia now. Her middle name. Well. Her name. It's a long story. Delia Hart."
There was a pause on the line. It went on longer than he expected, long enough that he thought the call had dropped, long enough that he put another dime in.
"Hart," his mother said at last.
"Yeah. Hart. Like the—like a heart. But with no E."
"Well," said Barbara Callahan, and her voice had changed in a way he could not place, gone soft and odd and careful, as though she were holding something fragile in her other hand. "Well. Bring her, then. I'll see you both at six."
---
She was waiting on the steps of her building on Olive Street on Thursday afternoon when he pulled up in the Valiant, and he very nearly drove past her.
He had seen her only in the white apron, with her hair pinned up under a net and flour on her wrists. He had not been prepared for the cream coat or the burgundy dress or the gold belt or the boots, or for the hair, which she had clearly spent an hour on with a round brush and a hot blow-dryer and a can of something with a great deal of hold, and which framed her face in those sweeping honey-colored wings. He had not been prepared for the smoky brown liner or the peach on her cheeks or the gloss on her mouth. He was not prepared for any of it. He sat behind the wheel with the engine running and the heater roaring and his jaw somewhere near the gearshift while she came down the steps and opened the passenger door herself.