We celebrated my new job with dinner. We had to eat after midnight because Stella had a night shift. I made a green-bean casserole that Stella probably knew as well as I did. It was one of Lucy’s recipes. The secret was cornflakes.

I took a nap at eight and woke up at eleven to put my casserole in the oven. Nobody was home. I set the table and waited. I got up eventually and wrapped my hand in a dishcloth and pulled out the glass tray. Abe came up behind me, very sudden. “Careful with that,” he said. “Those towels aren’t thick.”

He said he was going to meet Stella at her parking lot. He walked her home most nights. I hadn’t known because I was never awake. I wondered what they found to talk about.

When they came back, Stella tossed a salad. “Something simple,” she said, but it looked like a dish from a restaurant: green and purple lettuce, sweet pecans, pears sliced so thin you could see right through them. Since she’d started working, she’d learned a few things about how to make a home. She poured herself some wine and drank it fast, invisible sips as she whisked oil and vinegar. She looked up once and caught me watching. “Sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“No,” I said. “You should do what you want.”

“But still,” she said. She poured me a glass of sparkling water for her toast, which was to me. Her salad was rich and oily. I dug for pecans. We tore chunks off a loaf of bread and dipped them in the dark swirl of our dressing. Stella talked about work stuff, gourmet coffee and designer bedspreads. “Nothing like the pleasures of material comfort,” she said. “They’re fabulous.”

The night felt good—my new job, my old son, my niece, our home—and its parts gave off strong flavors in the heat of that table, like crushed tea leaves in boiling water. I was steeping. Our faces were flushed and open. I asked Abe about the bank. “So what does it do all day?” I said. “The people in it, I mean.”

“He hates to talk about his work,” Stella said. “I thought you knew.”

“Oh,” I said. I hadn’t known.

Abe spoke sharply: “Now it’s Tilly’s work, too.”

Stella raised her eyebrows.

“I don’t know exactly what you’ll be doing,” he told me. “But I know you’ll be working in the high-asset side of things. The clients with the big accounts.”

Stella brought out three pieces of coffee cake in little plastic sandwich bags, leftovers from the inn. “It’s just pieces,” she said. “We give the rest to the maids.”

Abe shook his head politely, no thanks, and got up to pour himself a glass of water. He said he had a conference call.

“It’s two in the morning!” I said.

“London,” he said, and thanked me for the casserole.