Chapter 19: Her Room

I carried her two bags up the outside stairs of the old brick library at four o'clock the next afternoon.

Room 2 was at the end of a narrow hall that smelled of paper and radiators.

I stood at the door with her canvas bags in my hands and knocked.

"It's open," she said.

It was a single room with a high window over the main street.

A narrow bed stood against one wall, with a hot plate and a kettle on a table beside it.

Her library books were already stacked on the sill.

She sat in the only chair with her ankles crossed.

She wore a clean white shirt I had never seen.

Her braid lay over her shoulder, and she looked rested.

"Put them down," she said.

I set the bags by the door.

"I went to see Mama on Saturday."

"Iris."

"There's a cottonwood over her. Someone has kept the grass cut."

She looked at her hands.

"It took nine minutes to walk there from the feed store."

I said nothing.

I had nothing that could go next to that.

"Dottie's paying for this room until I'm on my feet," she said.

"I haven't decided about the money yet. I'm going to read every page first."

"That's right."

"I didn't ask what you thought."

"No."

She raised her eyes.

"I'm not here to forgive you," she said. "I want you to know that before anything else."

"Then why am I here?"

"Because I still want you." She said it very plainly. "And I don't trust it."

She folded her hands.

"So we do this my way."

My pulse was loud in my ears.

"I have terms."

"Tell me."

"You don't touch me unless I say."

"Yes."

"You don't come to town unless I send for you."

"Yes."

"You never ask where I go or who I talk to."

"Yes."

"And you tell me the truth. Everything I ask, for as long as I ask."

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