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Carol cackles. Fran slides her the pretzels. And somewhere in there, a few numbers deep, something in Olivia’s shoulders finally comes down. The ladies pull her in the way they’ve been pulling me in all night, teasing her, feeding her, narrating their own cards out loud in a way that is absolutely against the rules, and I watch her fight a smile, lose it, and start to have the time of her life.

But she does not stop being competitive.

Because a few games in, it happens.

Delores calls “G-52,” and Olivia goes very, very still.

I lean over to look at her card. She’s close. One square from a full blackout, one number from taking the whole thing, and the tension comes off her like heat.

“You’re close,” I say.

“I know exactly how close I am.”

“You want me to stop talking?”

“Yes.”

Delores reaches into the hopper. The whole table leans in. Ruth crosses herself. Carol grips the frog. Olivia lifts her dauber a half inch off the card and hovers it there, breathing like a woman at the free-throw line with the game on it.

“O-66.”

For a second nothing happens. Then her whole face changes, and she’s on her feet before the dauber even lands, and she slams it down on that last square hard enough to rattle the table.

“BINGO!”

She yells it. This careful, contained woman throwing both arms over her head in the middle of the Shady Oaks fellowship hall, and I’m out of my chair before I decide to be, because you do not get to watch Olivia lose it like this and stay sitting down.

I throw my hands up with her. “BINGO!”

And then she turns, still glowing, still buzzing, and she doesn’t think about it, I can tell she doesn’t think about it, because if she thought about it she’d never do it. She throws her arms around my neck.

I catch her.

Of course I catch her. I’ve been ready to catch this woman for weeks.

She’s laughing into my shoulder, both my arms around her, and she fits there like the spot was cut for her, and for one second all the careful distance we’ve kept since Monday just evaporates, because you can’t hold a line and celebrate a blackout at the same time. The ladies are hollering. Fran is banging the table. Somebody starts a slow clap that is in no way warranted for a bingo win and happens anyway.

And Olivia, in my arms, warm and undone and happy, tips her head back to look at me. There it is again. The face that gets away from her.

Neither of us lets go right away.

Neither of us mentions Monday.

But it’s right there, humming between us, the whole time.

Olivia’s winnings, it turns out, are a twelve-dollar gift card to the diner inside the assisted living center and a plastic trophy shaped like a bingo dauber that Fran insists is a tremendous honor. Olivia holds it like it’s an Oscar.

The pace slows. There’s a stretch between games where Delores refills the hopper and everybody catches their breath, and the table becomes what it apparently always becomes, which is four women talking over each other about everything and nothing. Somebody’s granddaughter’s wedding. Carol’s knee. A casserole recipe that starts a small war.

I sit back and put my arm along the back of Olivia’s chair. Not on her. Just along it.

I watch her from the side. She’s got the diner gift card squared to the table in front of her, and she’s listening to Fran defend the casserole with her whole face, asking a follow-up question like it matters, and Fran lights up, and I think, not for the first time tonight, that this woman fits into places she’s convinced she doesn’t belong.

She catches me looking.

“What,” she whispers, leaning in so the ladies don’t hear, which brings her close. Closer than we’ve been since the hug. Close enough to smell the lavender again.

“Nothing.” I keep my eyes on my card and my voice low, just for her. “You just look good in here.”