And that was it. That was the whole conversation. She went back to her book. I went back to cleaning.
That first winter, I had a problem. Willa’s school closed for three snow days in a row, the week of a Thursday. I had nobody to watch her. My mother lived four hours away. My friends all worked. Darren was “busy,” which is what Darren always was.
I called Mrs. Whitaker on Wednesday night. I was so nervous my voice shook.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I know this is unprofessional. Would it be all right if I brought my daughter tomorrow? She’ll be quiet. She’ll just sit in a corner and read. I promise she won’t touch anything.”
There was a long pause on the other end.
“Bring her,” Mrs. Whitaker said.
So I brought Willa. She was nine and a half, with a messy brown braid and glasses that were
always sliding down her nose. I sat her at the kitchen table with her library book and a sketchpad and made her promise, four times, that she would not move from that chair.
Mrs. Whitaker was home that day. She came into the kitchen around ten and looked at Willa sitting
at her table.
Willa looked back at her. She pushed her glasses up her nose.
“Hi,” Willa said. “I like your house. It has a lot of windows.”
“It does,” Mrs. Whitaker agreed.
“How many?”
Mrs. Whitaker thought about it. “I don’t know, actually. I’ve never counted.”
“Can I count them?”
