said. “Ethan back okay?”
“Yep, all good,” Cass said, sitting down.
“So,” Bev said, her voice different, flat, “I’m sorry to have to talk to you about this over the phone and right when Ethan’s back.”
Cass heard her take a breath. “Bev?”
“I need you to take over now instead of at the end of the year. The foundation has approved.”
“What? Why?” Cass couldn’t make sense of it.
“I’ve gotten some bad news.” She paused. “Bone cancer.”
“Oh my God, Bev,” Cass stood. “I’m so sorry.”
“But I’m happy for you. This is what you’ve been waiting for and working toward. You deserve it.”
“But are you going to be okay? And your retirement.”
“The doctors think I have a decent chance. I’ll be okay. Hopefully.” Then in her typical Bev way, she was all business. “Letters will go out to the families tomorrow, so tell the Fates and Ella and Fanny the day after. You’re a natural, you know. You have been since … well, I won’t say since you walked in the door, but since your first conversation with May. I know that. The foundation knows that. Follow your instincts.”
That first day, two and a half years ago, the front porch had been covered in brilliant burgundy leaves. Cass had seen a flyer at Vee’s library. That’s what she used to do when she wasn’t working for the boring accountant—hang out at the library, which Ethan, always on the lookout for danger, complained was too close to the jail. But Cass loved being around books, and she loved to read, always had. She loved words.
The bright orange flyer on the library bulletin board announced that Howell House, just around the corner, needed people to read to the older women who could no longer see, and it wasn’t so much that something clicked into place as that Cass felt some soft thing inside her. When she’d arrived, Bev suggested she start by talking to May, who had Cass’s grandmother’s white hair. And although Cass had not signed on for talking, she felt the soft thing again. As the weeks then years went by, Cass became like that perfume that smells different on each person—able to figure out what each Fate needed and help her get it. Except for May. All this time and Cass had yet to figure out how she could help May.
In January, Bev had pulled her aside and told her she’d be retiring at the end of the year and that she, and the board, wanted Cass to take over when she did—something Cass had already been dreaming of. But to have it happen like this was not part of the plan, and she felt terrible for Bev, who’d been looking forward to traveling with her husband and to visiting grandchildren. Now there would be hospitals, and someone would need to help her.
“If there’s anything I can do, Bev, just let me know.”
“You’re doing it,” she said.
Cass sat down. Now this was her office. Three of the walls were floor-to-ceiling windows—out the front, the gravel parking area; out the side, a line of pyramid cedars; out the back, a deck. And everywhere, those old oak trees. But it was the fourth wall, the original brick exterior of the house that with the addition of this room had become an interior wall, which made what had just happened seem real. Cass stood and ran her hands over its rough surface.
In the kitchen, Fanny, their cook, looked up from the counter where she was squeezing lemons into a pitcher and nodded at Cass, who pushed open the swinging door into the adjacent breakfast room, where the Fates were still at the table.
“How is everybody?” Cass said, gazing at the black and white faces, at Atta’s slicked-back charcoal gray hair that she kept in a long braid, and at Lois’s not blonde but yellow hair.
“How are you, Mary Cassatt Miller?” Atta said, as she continued cutting an article out of the newspaper, her plate pushed away as if she were through but she never was.
“Lois, welcome,” Cass said, sitting in May’s empty chair. “Sorry to miss your arrival.” Lois had taken Ruth Ann’s room. Ruth Ann who could never remember to put her teeth in. A couple of weeks ago, she had wandered, and if they wandered, they had to go.
Lois half-smiled, half-grimaced, her lipstick every bit as red as Atta’s—at breakfast—as she picked up a measuring cup and poured the rest of the cream into her coffee. “Is that really your middle name?” she asked.
Cass nodded. “Painting was my mother’s dream. Are you settled in?”
“They wouldn’t let me bring all my stuff.”
“Who?” Cass asked.
“It’s all just clutter, the kids said.”
“Is there something in particular you miss?”
Lois peered at her through her old lady, mother-of-pearl frames. “I keep thinking about my red heels. They have this diagonal strap across the top. Richard bought them for me in Italy. Our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. I haven’t worn them in twenty years.”
“Let me see what I can do.” Cass turned to Ella. “May?”
“Not feeling well this morning.”
“Again,” Atta said.
Ella, who worked 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., raised her eyebrows and held onto her coffee. Her mother was Spanish, and Ella had inherited that Spanish flair. She was young and still lived at home and did not yet have a mind of her own. But she was smart and dependable and loved the Fates almost as much as Cass. “It started Saturday,” she said. “Fanny’s been taking her a tray.”
Cass pushed the scissors back from the edge of the table as Atta reached for the biscuit on her plate and added a giant spoonful of strawberry jam.
“So,” Ella said, her dark eyes wide, “does absence make the heart grow fonder?”
“More importantly,” Atta said, “How was the sex?”
“Atta,” Ella said. “Boundaries.”
“I’m against them,” Atta said. “I wonder how many years it’s been since I had sex. That could be another one of your improvements, Cass, another service offered by Howell.” And she popped the loaded biscuit into her mouth.
Cass and Ella laughed. Fanny was laughing in the kitchen. “Request noted,” Cass said. “Are the two of you sharing lipstick?”
“It wouldn’t hurt you to put on some, too,” Atta said, holding a napkin in front of her mouth so she could continue chewing and talk.
“You don’t give up, do you, Atta?”
“I do not.”
Some women had to learn to be more self-sufficient, like Ruth Ann who had asked permission for everything, and others, due to the restrictions of age, had to make peace with being less, like Atta. Wherever they were in the process, Cass wanted them to have things to look forward to. She wanted Howell to be about living.
“Who’s doing something fun today?”
“I’m
