“Let me show you around,” she said. They headed toward the stairs, the older woman chatting the whole time. “My daughter Pauline recently got married and her husband Karl is a saint,” she said. “He helps me with dripping faucets and leaky pipes. Pauline’s a nurse in a doctor’s office a couple of days a week, and Karl’s a policeman. They live about a mile away. You’ll be moving into Pauline’s bedroom.” They’d reached the landing and turned right. “There are two other spare bedrooms up here, but neither one has a bed.” She chuckled. “One is my sewing room and the other already has a crib in it. No baby on the horizon yet, but I’m an optimist!”

They walked into a spacious bedroom, and even though it appeared that Miss Myrtle’s daughter had cleared any personal possessions from the room, the wallpaper with its big magnolia flowers and the white feminine furniture made Anna feel as if she were trespassing.

“Won’t Pauline mind having a stranger staying in her room?” she asked.

“Not at all,” Miss Myrtle said. “I spoke to her about it yesterday evening and she was right pleased to know I’d have someone else here with me for when Freda goes home at night.” She smoothed a wrinkle from the pink chenille bedspread. “I had Pauline late in life. I was forty when she was born. I’d given up on ever having a child, and then suddenly, there she was! So now I’m sixty-two years old—an old lady with rheumatism to boot—and she worries I’m going to fall or whatever and rot on the floor.” She chuckled again. “When I told her about you, she came right over and packed up the last of her things to clear the room for you.”

“Well, please thank her for me,” Anna said

“Oh, you’ll have a chance to thank her yourself,” she said. “She stops over all the time. Still a mama’s girl, that one.”

Anna forced a smile. People had called her a “mama’s girl,” too. She guessed she’d never hear those words in reference to herself again.

Miss Myrtle gave her some pink sachets she’d made herself to put in the dresser drawers for when Anna’s clothes arrived. Aunt Alice had responded with worry when Anna called to ask her to send her some of her clothes and art supplies.

“I don’t like the idea of you being so far from home for so long,” she’d said. “You’re too young and you’ve just been through such a terrible loss.” Her words made Anna wince. Aunt Alice had never come right out and said she blamed Anna for her mother’s death, but how could she not? Anna certainly blamed herself.