She was smaller than Aaliyah remembered, or Aaliyah was larger, or time had simply done what time does. The gray in her hair was more pronounced. The beige cardigan was gone—still hanging in Aaliyah's hall closet—and in its place Ruth wore a soft gray sweater and jeans and slippers shaped like cats, which would have been funny under other circumstances. For a moment neither woman spoke. The smell of powder and jasmine drifted out into the hallway, and with it the smell of something baking, cinnamon, as if Ruth had known to expect a guest she had no reason to expect.
"Baby," Ruth said, and then stopped, as if the word had come out before she could catch it.
"Don't," Aaliyah said. Not cruel. Just clear. "Not yet."
Ruth nodded. Stepped back. "Will you come in?"
The apartment was neat in the way of people who have learned that chaos on the outside makes chaos on the inside harder to fight. A crossword puzzle book lay open on the coffee table, a pen resting in the crease. On a side table, in a small frame, stood a photograph of Elias that Aaliyah recognized from Marcus's phone—last summer, at the coast, wind in his coily hair. Beside it, face down, lay another frame. Aaliyah did not ask about that one. She already knew, somehow, that it would be her own face at some age Ruth had been allowed to keep.
"Marcus told you I was coming?" Aaliyah asked.
"Marcus told me you knew," Ruth said. She gestured at the sofa, then seemed to think better of hosting gestures and simply sat, hands folded in her lap like a woman in a waiting room. "He didn't say you were coming. I hoped. I also hoped you wouldn't. Both things at once. I'm getting good at that."