“No.”
“All right.” Ruth set the pitcher down. “Your eyes look like you’ve been reading fine print on a moving bus. If you need to be off the window section after this, say so. Glenn can take it. Glenn likes the window. Glenn thinks the highway is entertainment.”
Glenn was the weekend busser, seventeen, earphones perpetually half out, a boy who had not yet learned that other people’s conversations were not a podcast. Emily shook her head. “I’ll keep it,” she said. “I told them I might talk to them. If I vanish, it becomes a different story.”
“You and your stories,” Ruth said, which was as close as she came to prying. She knew Emily’s father had been ill. She knew Emily had arrived three years ago with a car full of boxes and a politeness that did not explain the boxes. She had given her the job because Emily could be taught the pot-angle and because, on the first afternoon, Emily had found a mistake in the produce invoice without making the produce man feel like a fool. Ruth valued that more than she valued résumés. She had never asked to see one.