She dried herself and combed out her wet hair slowly. She lay down on the big bed and hoped for sleep, but her body hummed with tension like a telephone line. Finally she quit hoping and got up, padding across the heavy carpeting to the closet and folding back a mirrored door to pull out a long loose lounging dress, pale gray and scattered with red poppies. She yanked it over her head and went down the hall to the kitchen, where she began searching the refrigerator.

Good. Beer. With one of those in me, I bet I can sleep. I’m glad Tom left some.

Armed with the beer and a fresh pack of cigarettes, Catherine wandered into the living room. She settled in her favorite chair, which she had pulled out of its original spot so she could look out the bay window. She had arranged beside it a heavy round table, and, some time later, another chair to keep the first one company. It was her own little base in a house too big for one person; a house still echoing with loss.

The old home across the street had been renovated into the town library. It closed at eleven on Saturday, so Catherine was just in time to see Mrs. Weilenmann, the librarian, lock the front door. Mrs. Weilenmann was the town wonder: an educated northern black woman, who spoke with no trace of the heavy accent white Southerners associated with blacks. And, rumor had it, Mrs. Weilenmann, a widow, had acquired her name by marrying a white man. It was a bandage to Catherine’s conscience that Mrs. Weilenmann had gotten the librarian’s job. The only wonder, as Catherine saw it, was that she wanted it.

I meant to go to the library today when I got back, Catherine recalled, glancing down at the heap of books on the floor as Mrs. Weilenmann maneuvered her Toyota out of the library parking lot.

Catherine reckoned she had enough to read to last until Monday. And took a swallow of beer to celebrate that minor goodness.