Mrs. Fletcher(86)

Tuesday mornings quickly became the highlight of her work week. She came into the office in her most comfortable jeans, took care of her email and any other business that couldn’t wait, and then filed onto the Elderbus along with her fellow bowlers. They trash-talked the whole way to Haddington Lanes, where the seniors pretty much had the place to themselves. It was an invigorating break from the daily routine, full of laughter and high fives and soft drinks.

Right before her fifth outing, Eve’s teammates presented her with an extra-large T-shirt with the words FUTURE BIDDY emblazoned on the front. Eve wore it proudly, and bowled her highest game ever, a completely respectable 117. Later that day, she called to check on Helen Haymer, and was sorry to hear that the vertigo wasn’t getting any better, though not quite as sorry as she probably should have been.

*

Eve was thinking about Amanda as she left work on a rainy Wednesday evening in early March, curious to know how she was doing at the library. She wondered if it would be okay to reach out to her with a brief, friendly email, just to say hi and let her know that she hadn’t been forgotten. It was probably a bad idea, but the silence between them felt wrong and unfinished, like a phone left off the hook.

Amanda had been on her mind a lot in the past few days because Eve needed to find her replacement ASAP—in an era of tight municipal budgets, you had to fill a job opening quickly or risk having the position eliminated—and the hiring process was in full swing. More than fifty applicants had submitted their résumés, many of them seriously overqualified for the low-paid, entry-level post. At least a dozen had master’s degrees—mostly in Social Work or Nonprofit Administration—and two had completed law school, only to realize that there were already too many lawyers in the world.

Eve had drawn up a short list of five candidates, and had interviewed three so far. They were all perfectly fine—competent, professional, appropriately dressed. They had relevant experience and impressive letters of recommendation. Hannah Gleezen, the young woman she’d spoken to that afternoon, was fresh out of Lesley College, and had spent the past six months doing an unpaid internship at an assisted living facility in Dedham, where she’d called out Bingo numbers, organized a hugely successful Scrabble tournament, and led a holiday sing-along that had been a real morale booster for the residents. She was earnest and bubbly, and Eve had no reason to doubt her sincerity when she said that she really liked old people and believed that her generation had a lot to learn from their elders.

“I don’t see it as me helping them,” she’d said. “It’s more of a two-way-street type of thing.”

Eve could have just hired her on the spot. The seniors would love her, and so would the staff. She was the complete antithesis of Amanda, who’d confessed in her interview that old people freaked her out, not only because of their casual racism and homophobia and their love of Bill O’Reilly—though all that was bad enough—but also because of their broken-down bodies, and the terrible clothes they wore, and even the way some of them smelled, which she knew was unfair, but still.

It had been a gamble to hire her—Eve knew that from Day One—and it hadn’t paid off in the end, but that didn’t mean it had been a mistake. She was proud of Amanda for trying to shake things up at the Senior Center, and proud of herself for taking a chance on such a wild card. She didn’t want to settle for a replacement who didn’t have that same spark, a bland, safe choice that would look like an apology—or worse, a betrayal of everything Amanda had stood for—so Eve had shaken Hannah’s hand and said she’d get back to her in a week or so, after she’d met with the remaining candidates.

The rain was cold and insidious—she could feel it snaking under her collar and rolling down her back as she made her way across the parking lot—but she thought she detected a faint undercurrent of spring in the air, the faraway promise of something better. It was late, almost six thirty, and the lot was deserted except for her minivan and a car she didn’t recognize—a newish Volvo sedan—parked right beside it, so close to the white divider line that it felt like a violation of her personal space.

The Volvo’s lights and wipers were on, which seemed a little ominous, and made it hard for Eve to see through the windshield. Squinting into the glare, she squeezed into the narrow space between the two vehicles. As she clicked her key fob—the van’s dome light flashed on to greet her—the passenger window of the Volvo slid down.

“Eve.” Julian was leaning across the interior console, wearing a green army coat with button-down epaulettes, his head and shoulders torqued at an awkward angle. “What’s up?”

As she turned to face him, her shoulder bumped into the van’s side-view mirror.

“Jeez,” she said. “Did you have to park so close?”

“Sorry.” Julian looked embarrassed. “I’m out of practice. I don’t drive very much.”

It was true, she realized. She’d never seen him behind the wheel before.

“Can I . . . help you with something?” Her tone was frostier than she’d intended. It was disorienting to see him here, at her place of work, without any advance warning. Not a practice she wanted to encourage.

“Not really,” he said. “I was just hoping we could talk.”

A car drove by on Thornton Street, and Eve felt suddenly exposed, as if she’d been caught in the middle of an illicit transaction. She cupped her hands around her face and leaned in closer.