“I’ll give you his number,” she said. “You can call him.”

“Nora Clarke,” Marian said, her tone sharp. “What are you doing?”

Nora stilled in place, so effective was Marian Goodnight’s classroom voice. When Nora was growing up, this was exactly how she always reacted to it—a total body lockdown that ensured she had stopped doing whatever it was Marian didn’t want her doing. But this time, her outward-facing freeze-up was accompanied by something similar on the inside, like the morning thunderstorm in her mind had abruptly ceased entirely.

She set down Jonah’s duffel and took a deep breath.

“Go right over there and sit down,” Marian said, pointing to the flowered couch that two nights ago Nora had promised herself she’d be rid of. When she sat, one of the upholstered buttons poked her left butt cheek, but she didn’t even bother to move.

“Can’t make coffee on this contraption,” Marian said from the kitchen, obviously referring to Nora’s fancy coffee machine, and then she set about filling up the old kettle. “So it’ll have to be tea.”

“Okay,” said Nora, even though she didn’t like tea. That kettle was Nonna’s.

Once Marian had it on the stove, she came back over and sat on the other side of the sofa, obviously avoiding any upholstered buttons.

“You’re just like her, you know,” she said. “Your grandmother.”

It wasn’t the first time Nora had heard this—not even the first time she’d heard it from Marian.

But it was the first time it didn’t sound all that much like a compliment.

“Now you know I loved her,” said Marian. “She was one of my best friends in the whole entire world, and I don’t suppose I’ll ever get over her not being here.”

Nora nodded, tears springing to her eyes. “Me neither.”

“But she was awfully stubborn. Like a mule, about things big and small.”

“She wasn’t.” Even as she said it, though, Nora felt a knot of uncertainty take up residence in her stomach. She’d always thought of stubborn people as people who couldn’t admit when they were wrong. But Nora had never really been in a situation where she’d thought Nonna had been wrong about anything.

“Now I think I knew her pretty well,” said Marian. “I knew her differently than you did, sure. So believe me when I tell you, she was stubborn. Couldn’t get her to budge on that wallpaper, for example. And do you know, thirty years ago there was a man who wanted to take her out, a very nice man whose company I happen to know she enjoyed? But did she go?”

This was a rhetorical question, but also it was Marian, so Nora had to answer.

“No?”

“No! And do you know why?”

Nora shook her head.