The clerk had a room available on the accessible premises. I asked the price twice, though I had understood it the first time. Bram stood well away from the counter while I counted my money. He had his own questions to ask and his own arrangements to make; the fact that we had shared an afternoon did not give me a claim on his evening.
"Is there something less expensive?" I asked.
The clerk explained what was available. I could accept the room or keep looking elsewhere by permitted routes. She did not hurry me, but there were people waiting. I took the money from the compartment where I had kept what I thought of as my contribution to Tessa's household.
That money had already furnished a room in my imagination. It had bought groceries I had never carried into her kitchen and paid a share of bills she had never asked me to pay. Counting it onto the counter felt like taking something away from her, though she had never possessed it.
I paid for my own shelter. The clerk handed me what I needed and explained the practical details. I repeated the room information under my breath until I was certain I would not confuse this key with the one still in my purse from Harvey's.
Bram approached the counter after I stepped away. I waited near the chairs, not to supervise but to return his pencil. He completed his own arrangement and joined me with his newspaper folded small enough for a pocket.
"You've got somewhere?" he asked.
"Yes. It cost more than I planned."
"Most things do when you didn't plan them."
I gave him a look. He raised one hand. "That was about my room too."
We found a place to stand out of the traffic. I told him I would not need more coins that night. I had enough for the next planned call and would obtain change when I could. He accepted this without asking for a report on my wallet.
"My daughter can't have me," I said.
"For a visit?"
"To live." The words sounded larger spoken to a near stranger. "She'll meet me. She says that isn't the same thing."
"Is it?"
I started to tell him about the house and stopped. Those facts were reasons I needed an address, not proof that Tessa owed me hers. He had not asked for the arithmetic of my problem.
"Have you ever accepted an answer you disliked?" he asked.
"Of course." I heard how quickly I had said it. "Parents do that all the time."
"I was thinking of now."
A cart rattled past us. I stepped back and let it go, grateful for the interruption. I could have ended the conversation there. Instead I asked whether his family ever failed to return calls. He said sometimes, and waited.
"After my husband died, the house got so quiet I could hear the refrigerator stop," I said. "I'd call one of the children. If nobody answered, I'd stay beside the phone as if the answer were still coming."
I had never said it that way before. I had called it checking in, or arranging Sunday, or needing help with a hinge. The errand gave the silence a reasonable shape. Without an errand, I was a widow in a room listening to an appliance.
Bram did not tell me what my husband would have wanted. He did not compare losses or promise that my children would come around. "That sounds hard," he said.
"It was. It is." I pressed the edge of the key into my palm, then loosened my hand. "But she's alive at the other end of a telephone. She isn't gone because she says no."
He nodded once. I could not tell whether he thought that a discovery worth making at sixty-four. I was glad he did not congratulate me.
We agreed that if we happened to be in the dining area the next morning, we could share breakfast. Neither promised to wait if the other made different arrangements. I gave him back the pencil, and we went our separate ways.
In my room, I set the purse on a chair and checked that Tessa's number was legible. There were no familiar clothes to unpack, no address book to place beside the bed. Still, the bed was mine for the night because I had asked for it and paid for it. I took off my shoes and let that be enough until morning.