I stared back until she shrugged. “You’d think after a lifetime of writing great poems, you’d have enough money to get by on in old age.”

“Don’t you get Social Security, things like that?” My notions of how people, old or not, got by was meager.

“It’s not enough. She never earned enough to get much payout. I hope she can keep the house, it’s practically month to month lately.”

I was trying to think things through. “Could she sell the house?”

“And go where? She loves the house, she’s been here almost twenty years. Even refinancing wouldn’t help much. It’s getting harder for her to do conferences or teaching jobs, the things that bring in money. I know. You look at that face and think she’s immortal, like a Greek statue or something. But age is finally catching up with her.”

I wondered if Barb was aware of Mathias’s poems, what they were worth to anyone. Six months of a mortgage payment? A year?

Barb went on, “Now don’t say anything to her. I shouldn’t have blabbed. She’s super proud, she doesn’t want anyone to know.”

But Barb knew, as did Oscar, as did I. I thought of all the people who arrived with food, or who offered rides or herbal supplements or the use of their vacation houses, or even me, taking on the gardening chores. It seemed like a lot of people knew something.

I’d never heard Viridian say anything about money. Either it didn’t interest her or it was nobody’s business or both. Life went on as it always did around her. People came and went, sitting with her to talk and drink wine or iced tea or fruit juice with sparkling water. Oscar cooked up suppers of fish and pasta and vegetables. Viridian presided over it all with effortless serenity.

In the two weeks before the conference, I saw her nearly every day. I dug up the foxtails and cut back the rosemary. I nursed along the new plantings out back and pruned the trees. The fence was still down and I guess I was getting used to the look of the scorched panels, although it wasn’t anything I liked thinking about.