"Under the letter."
June nodded. She rinsed a mug that was already clean. "And if they start talking about money like money is a test you already failed, you hand them the waiver and you do not apologize for the waiver. A waiver is a rule they wrote. You didn't sneak in through a window."
"I know."
"You know a lot of things at seven in the morning," June said, but her mouth softened. She came around the table and fixed the collar of the white blouse where it had folded under the cardigan. Her hands were warm and smelled faintly of the citrus lotion she used after shifts, the cheap kind from the hospital gift shop that she pretended was good enough. "Your mama would tell you to sit up. I'm telling you to breathe. Both can be true."
Nia swallowed oatmeal and a feeling that did not have a tidy name. "What if I mess up the pedal in the middle?"
"Then you fix it," June said. "People mess up in the middle of everything. Hospitals run on people fixing the middle. You think a surgeon gets to start the day over because his hand thought about something else? He finishes. You finish. Then you come home and tell me the truth about how it went, not the story you think I want."
"What story do you want?"
June looked at her for a long second. The clock on the microwave blinked the wrong hour, as it had since a storm in August, and neither of them had the code to correct it. "I want the one where you walked in there as yourself. The rest is their business until they make it yours."
She put a banana in the side pocket of the canvas bag and then took it out and put it in again, dissatisfied with both choices. "Bus pass is in the zipper. I'll be here when you get back. If I'm asleep, wake me. I mean it. Don't do that polite thing where you sit on the couch in the dark like a ghost who pays rent."