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My hand reaches the door handle before I understand that I have moved.

I stop there.

If I walk in, Tova will look up. She will ask why I am here. I will say I had a meeting, which is true, and the library will become one more place I came to check on her.

I let go of the handle.

The house listing is under Tova’s elbow while I cut peppers.

She has printed the floor plan at school and drawn directly on it in green pencil.

“Is that the bed?”

“It’s a bed.”

“It crosses the doorway.”

“I’m still deciding.”

“You may want to decide in favor of entering the room.”

She moves it two centimeters and keeps drawing.

The desk is beneath the window. She has colored it hard enough that the green has gone shiny.

“That color?”

“Yes.”

“It is aggressive.”

“It’s green.”

“Those statements can coexist.”

She smiles without looking up.

I put the knife down and turn the chicken in the pan.

The house is twelve minutes from the clinic when traffic behaves. The roof report arrived this morning. I have read it three times and opened the savings account twice, as though the numbers might become friendlier if they catch me being persistent.

There is one number in that arithmetic that is not mine. A house is a thing a person buys when she is certain she is staying, and my staying is a document attached to an employer, renewed by people I have never met, on a schedule nobody consults me about.

I do not say that part at the table.

“Did the roof man answer?”

“On the fourth attempt.”

“And?”

“It needs work.”

“All roofs need work.”

“You have been researching.”

“I’ve got internet.”