"Yes, ma'am."
"Hold this." She held out the turkey, and he took it automatically, and she went back to fighting with the lock. "Leo Ruddock," she said to the door of her Oldsmobile, "thinks that because I slipped on my own back step in October and cracked a bone in my wrist that I am no longer capable of roasting a bird. Leo Ruddock was a probationary fireman when I was already cooking that turkey. I cooked it the year the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. I cooked it the year they put a man on the moon. I cooked it the year Walter died, God rest him, and I cooked it with my own two hands, and I will cook it tomorrow, and if Leo Ruddock wants to send his men to buy a turkey behind my back he can go buy one at the A and P in Coudersport and leave mine alone."
The lock gave. She opened the door and turned around.
Calvin Dombrowski stood in the snow holding the turkey against his chest like a baby, his mouth slightly open.
"Mrs. Pruitt," he said finally, "the captain just wanted to give you a year off."
"I don't want a year off. I'm eighty years old. I don't have years to spare." She turned the clear blue eyes on Nora. "And who are you, dear? You were fighting him for it. I saw you from the soup aisle. You had a very good grip."
"Nora," Nora said. "Nora Haverty. I'm sorry, I didn't know it was — I didn't know about any of this. I just needed a turkey."
Something happened in the old woman's face. It was small and quick, a flicker like a candle when a door opens somewhere in a house. She looked at Nora for a long moment through the falling snow.