Chapter 12: Halfway

The Keeper came on Wednesday, day fifteen, in a green Buick that had been old when I was born.

She parked in my yard and walked to the porch with a cane in one hand and a paper sack in the other.

Joss was at the table with his coffee, and I was in my socks with an egg pan in my hand.

We both stood up.

"Sit," she said. "Halfway. I come to every pair."

She put the sack on the table and took out a thermos, a tin of shortbread and her little black book.

She is ninety years old, and she sat down in my kitchen.

"Show me your wrists."

We held them out side by side.

She turned my wrist over with her dry fingers, and then Joss's.

The red cords were frayed a little and gray at the knots.

"Still hushed," she said. "Good."

She poured tea into my grandmother's cups, which I did not know she had found.

"Nothing's pulled you? No fever, no hunger that isn't yours?"

"No," I said.

"No," said Joss.

"Whatever you feel for each other, it's yours?"

"Yes," we said at the same time.

She looked at us over her glasses and smiled.

It was a small, dry, satisfied smile.

"Then I'll ask the question and be gone," she said.

"Either of you may walk today."

"The law says so."

"Do either of you wish to?"

"No," I said.

"No," Joss said.

He took my hand under the table.

The Keeper wrote something in the black book.

"I thought not," she said. "You make a loud pair."

My face burned, and Joss coughed into his fist.

She drank her tea and ate two pieces of shortbread.

She told us about her mother's Thirty, which ended on day nineteen in a screaming fight.

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