“Gross,” Margo says. She slides a salad toward me and tops it with three tomato slices. “Mrs. Ivory any minute now. Make sure she takes her pill first.”

Sure enough, when I get to the dining room, Mrs. Ivory is sitting at the end of the counter, handbag on her lap like someone might steal it. I deliver her salad with a bottle of ketchup instead of dressing and a glass of water. “Take your pill,” I say, watching until she does.

After my dad bought the land and we moved out to the motorhome, I didn’t get to do laundry with Margo anymore. “Stop in and see me after school sometimes,” she said on our last Sunday night at the Wash ’n Fold. So I did, every day after school, because I didn’t like going back to the empty motorhome. I ordered pudding or creamed corn, or whatever I’d rounded up enough change to get. When Margo had something that wasn’t moving, she’d wink at me and say, “Beets are on special today, sweetie. For you, thirteen cents.” If it was slow, she’d tell me the special came with dessert. And whatever the special was, I ate it, even if I didn’t like it, just so I wouldn’t hurt Margo’s feelings. I’d spread my books out on the back table and try to do my homework, but mostly I just watched people.

Sometimes my dad would pick me up on his way home from a job. He’d sit in the car and honk until I came out because he refused to set foot in the diner. Most days, though, I’d stay and help Margo close up. Then she’d drive me home.

If my dad wasn’t back yet, she’d idle in the driveway and shake her head. “Oh, I hate to leave you here,” she’d murmur, clucking her tongue. “No place for a girl to live.”

“It’s our clubhouse,” I’d say, repeating what my dad told me when I complained about the motorhome. “Not many kids get to live in a clubhouse.”

“I’d take you at my place if I could, you know,” she’d say, sighing. “But what can I do?”

I never knew how to answer.

Closing up with Margo all the time, I learned the ropes of things. I knew where she kept the extra ketchup and the hot sauce, and it was no problem for me to get them for customers if Margo was busy. And if customers needed something else when I brought them their condiments, I’d take the order in my school notebook, tear off the page, and bring it to the kitchen.