Her mouth had gone dry with anticipation, excitement. Her heartbeat, triggered by the accident with the car, continued rapidly, with a kind of exhilaration.

So long waiting—for what?

But where was the telephone? Abigail expected to see a wall phone in the kitchen, in the approximate place where there was a wall phone in her kitchen, but the design of this kitchen did not precisely resemble hers. And the counters were olive, while her counters were, less practicably, white; the deep-sunken aluminum sink was in a different location from where hers was, as was the Sub-Zero refrigerator and the ovens set in a wall—(as in her kitchen, there were two ovens, one above the other). Close up, the tile floor did not so closely resemble the tile floor in her house but was of a darker hue.

Looking so intently for a telephone had caused the light-headedness to return, as well as a curious fatigue mixed with anxiety, as if, even as Abigail understood (of course!) that she was trespassing in a private household, and had no right to be here, and was behaving very strangely for a person who valued privacy as she did, nonetheless she felt a strong impulse to lie down somewhere, in some quiet place where she would trouble no one and no one would trouble her, and when she was rested and thinking clearly again, she would complete the task for which she’d entered the house of strangers … Though for the moment the very concepts phone, call, husband had passed out of her consciousness.

She knew her name, though: Abigail R—. And the address of the house in which she’d lived for thirty years—she was sure she could recall it, if required.

However, as long as she was in this (unfamiliar) house and no one seemed to be home and she was certainly disturbing no one, she reasoned that she might as well use a bathroom, for she’d been needing to use a bathroom since the accident, she winced at the loud sound of the toilet flushing and the groan of old pipes, an echo of the pipes in her own house that needed replacing. And afterward, taking time to wash her face with cool water, dabbing at her bruised forehead and blood-stippled nose with wetted tissues. A strong smell of lavender soap lifted to her nostrils, a scent that brought comfort.

The children in this household too had grown and gone away, she thought. For you could not have such luxury soap in a downstairs bathroom if there were children in the house; you could have only utilitarian soap, and even this they’d leave filmy with the grime of their hands. Impossible, too, to have such delicate linen guest towels!

And so, there was something sad, bittersweet in the soap scent.