He handled the produce fast but gently with big hands that never stopped moving, and he chewed on a stub of Unlit cigar as he talked, keeping Up a steady stream of conversation with his customers. As quickly as he could sell cartons of tomatoes and bags of onions and bunches of celery and little crates of plums and apples and apricots, he had his helper bring out more from the back of the truck.

His helper was his opposite—short, bandy-legged like a jockey, with a shock of white hair and rheumy blue eyes. He wore hard-soled brown oxfords with a pattern tooled into the toes, brown polyester pants, a silky blue windbreaker. He grumbled over his chores but he didn’t seem really to mind them. He hurried as best he could on his crooked legs, saying, “Yeah, yeah,” to his boss’s orders in a put-upon way that seemed merely habit, flashing a seedy grin at the ladies.

Madeline waited her turn as half a dozen women ahead of her squeezed tomatoes and thunked melons. They must have all simultaneously been watching the television and had seen that the fruit man’s line was short.

Apparently there was a webcam mounted on one of the buildings nearby that made a sweep of the main street and the water’s edge, panning a nearly changeless landscape day and night. This played nonstop on the local cable channel. Madeline had laughed out loud when she stopped at Mabel Brink’s house one day to return a dish Gladys had borrowed and found her watching the static scene with great absorption. Mabel had said she wanted to see how busy it was at the bank before she bothered to drive downtown, a distance of three blocks. So now Madeline waited her turn, struggling to hide how funny she found this because the ladies mightn’t have been amused.

The produce looked good and the prices seemed fair, and she thought it was no wonder the grocery didn’t want the fruit man coming to town, although she doubted the Bensons would consider him significant competition. Even if he did cut into their business, she didn’t suppose they would do anything to stop him. Wasn’t competition the gospel of the free market, and weren’t they more patriotic than the president himself with their two oversized flags flapping at the front of the store?

“Well now, young lady, what can I do for you?” Albert asked when it was her turn. She explained what Gladys wanted.

“Ah, Gladys.” The way he said it made her grin When they’d assembled everything, he said, “Where’s your car, I’ll send Gus to carry for you.”

“Me carry? You carry, I’m getting too old for this game,” Gus said.

“Oh, that’s all right, I walked.”

“Walk, when you have all this?” Albert shook his head, chewing on the cigar harder. “Naw, that ain’t no good, it’s too much to lug all that way.”

“I’m fine, don’t worry. I’ll make a couple of trips. It’s a nice day.”

“Naw, now listen. You just leave it and I’ll drop it off on my way out of town.”

She protested, but he was immovable. Finally she gave in, and his smile was delighted and boylike. “Here, take an apricot,” he said, handing her a big, deeply golden one from a pint basket that the woman next in line had been about to buy.

Madeline stopped by Mary’s stand next, but Mary was deep in conversation with a young couple who looked like tourists, so Madeline ambled along Main Street, apricot juice dripping down her chin, looking in shop windows. In the first block there was Taylor’s Two Scoops and McAllaster Crafts, neither of which had opened for the season yet; Second Time Around Consignments (only open three days a week); and The Butcher Block Café. The next block was mostly consumed by the hotel—which sat on three lots, at least—and Benson’s SuperValu, next to which sat a tiny bakery called Maki’s Pasties, also not yet open. The third block had the Tip Top Tavern and a small engine repair shop that didn’t have any obvious name. She turned the corner there.

She passed the Village office and the newspaper office and then saw a hand-printed “Help Wanted” sign in the window of the next business, which was Paul Garceau’s pizzeria. Gladys and Arbutus had told her that he owned the place. She stuffed the apricot pit in her pocket, suddenly interested. She’d only been thinking of saying hello—she hadn’t seen Paul since that day they’d returned Greyson to Randi, but she’d thought about him a few times, thought maybe he was someone who could be a friend—but what about a job? Maybe a job was exactly what she needed.

Paul’s building looked like an old house, long and low-slung, white clapboard with red shutters. It was sweet—appealing with its quaint shutters—but the location seemed unfortunate to Madeline, sitting on this Uninspiring side street. Though maybe location didn’t matter so much in such a small town, maybe all that mattered was being the only pizzeria. She pulled open the door.

Inside it smelled of hot bread and pizza sauce. A chalkboard behind the counter described the menu options, and in the lower corner a quotation was written in blue chalk: There are no facts, only interpretations. F. Nietzsche. She grinned. She’d told a customer at Spinelli’s almost the same thing one time, not realizing it was an official kernel of philosophy, and had been surprised how angry the woman got. Her eyes traveled on. There were three wooden booths along each wall, the tables covered with red-checked cloths. The floor was a checkerboard of white and black tile and the walls were crowded with framed photos and pictures. Music drifted out of the kitchen, something bluesy.

A bell had jingled when she opened the door and after a moment Paul came out from the kitchen. He wore chinos, a white T-shirt and half apron, silver-rimmed spectacles. She didn’t remember those from before.

“Madeline Stone,” he said, sounding really pleased. “Hello. What brings you in? Hungry? Thirsty?”

Madeline felt flustered. She only wanted to ask about the job now that she knew there was one. It was true that Arbutus needed her, especially at the crucial moments, but she didn’t want to be watched like a hawk from sunup to sundown and even her sweet nature was showing signs of strain. For her own part, Madeline was getting more than a little restless, and more and more worried about money. She was already dipping into her savings to pay the few bills she had, and that made her nervous. “I wondered about your sign,” she said, hearing how abrupt it sounded after the words were out.

“Ah.” Paul ran his hand through his hair. “Aren’t you working for Gladys and Arbutus?”

“Well—yes. But it’s not exactly filling all my hours.”

“Ah,” he said again, and Madeline started to regret having said anything.

“If you’ve already hired someone—” she began, but he stopped her.

“You took me by surprise, is all. usually the Russian girls who come for the summer to clean rooms at the big motel come looking, but I put the sign Up early this year, so you’re the first.”

“You get Russians Up here to work?”

“Oh, sure. It’s an adventure, and good money—to them. But it’s not much, I have to tell you. And it’s a lot of work.”

“I know that.”

He squinted at her. “It’d be part-time, at least to start—I hire a few part-timers—and only Until fall.”

“That’d be perfect.”

“I need someone who can do whatever. Wait tables, chop vegetables, grate cheese, sweep the floors, wash dishes. It’s no sinecure.”

“I was a waitress in Chicago,” Madeline said, annoyed. He seemed to have sized her Up somehow and found her lacking, or Unlikely. “This is the only kind of work I’ve ever really done. I know what it’s like, trust me.”

“Sorry. I just would hate to get you in here Under false pretenses. If you’re really interested, I’ll show you around.”

Half an hour later she was employed, four days a week from noon to five. It wasn’t the busiest shift, he said, but she thought it was the best time of the day to be away from the house. She was almost back there when it occurred to her that probably she should have asked Gladys and Arbutus how they felt about this before she plunged in. Her victorious feeling faded a little. But she needed this job. Gladys and Arbutus would Understand. They’d have to.

“Plenty of ways to get out of the house without taking a job. What about Butte?”

“Oh, pshaw. I’m all right.”

“She’s here to work for Us, not go gallivanting around town.”

“I’m fine. You’re here, and if something goes wrong she’s not far away. Goodness, what a worrier you’ve turned into.”

Gladys did worry. She couldn’t sleep through the night, as often as not. After tossing and turning she’d go sit at the kitchen table at two and three in the morning, holding Madeline’s cat on her lap, stroking his fur—this was more comforting than she ever would have dreamed—staring at nothing.

How to solve this fix they were in? For a while now she’d been selling things on eBay with Mabel Brink’s help, a fact she’d wanted to keep to herself but which Madeline had found out. She felt a little lift of pride, remembering how astounded Madeline had been when she stopped in at Mabel’s one afternoon and caught them scanning photos of an old silver alarm clock into Mabel’s computer. Gladys wanted forty dollars for it, if some fool would pay so much for something that hadn’t cost five new in 1956. She had twelve of them, all exactly alike. Madeline had been amazed at the two of them, so handy with the digital camera and scanner, but why shouldn’t they know how to do these things? They were old but they weren’t dead yet. A now familiar feeling of Urgency gripped Gladys, though. She wasn’t dead but she was eighty-five. She wouldn’t go on forever.

“You might as well help me mail the packages, now that you know,” Gladys had said to Madeline after she found out about eBay. Arbutus wasn’t to know a thing about it, period, just as she was not to know anything about the kicksled, which Gladys hadn’t yet dealt with. It was still lodged in the trunk of that disreputable car of Madeline’s that was now sitting like an abandoned wreck in the drive. Madeline had agreed to keep quiet, but reluctantly. She didn’t seem to think Gladys should keep so many secrets. Well, she was young, she didn’t know there was a lot in life you’d do just as well to keep to yourself.

The fact was that the eBay money was a drop in the bucket compared to what they needed. It helped, but it wasn’t enough and never would be no matter what she dragged out of storage and sold. Frank’s autograph collection had been one of the first things to go. The Hummel figurines he’d given Gladys in their more prosperous years went next. Right now she had Up for auction a 1963 Raleigh bicycle, a six-point antler rack (imagine someone paying good money for that, couldn’t go out and get their own), a crate of glass soda bottles from the fifties, and two wool sweaters Mabel Brink had knitted coon’s ages ago. Just last night Gladys had Madeline help her wrap Up her sterling silver flatware set in its mahogany box. That had been a wedding gift. “Doesn’t it hurt to let it go?” Madeline had asked.

“Bah. Someone else may as well have the Use of it, it doesn’t matter.”

This was half true. It did matter, but it also didn’t. There was something freeing in letting the old stuff go. It felt a little like a new beginning, although why she should think about such things at her age Gladys really could not imagine.

At any rate, some money came in, but it went out again just as fast. Everyone got something, except for the SuperValu. Gladys refused to budge on that despite the increasing insistence of the Bensons’ requests. The reminders came in the mail with the balance due circled in red, and each time there were more exclamation points after the request to Please Pay! Gladys tossed every one of these into the garbage.

The only solution was to sell the hotel. No matter what she’d said to Arbutus, no matter how the idea broke her heart, in the end there would be no other way. The kicksled and all the rest of the old things were just the tip of the iceberg.

Albert knocked on the kitchen door just then, a box of produce balanced on his hip, and Gladys was glad of the distraction. With a frown she wasn’t even aware of, she snatched the box from his hands and shooed him and Gus into the kitchen for coffee. She noticed as she took the sugar bowl off the side counter that Madeline hadn’t taken the bills to the post office like she’d promised. Gladys sighed in vexation. Two of those bills were already close to being late, and now there was no chance they’d go out Until tomorrow. She’d have to remind Madeline in the morning, or else do it herself.

Gladys knew very well that Madeline was not like her mother. Jackie had been careless and selfish and immature from the day she was born, and obviously Madeline didn’t fit that bill. But still, every now and then Gladys felt a deep stab of Uncertainty at what she’d done, pleading with Madeline to come help them, bringing her into their home. Why had she done it, why had she not left well enough alone?

We needed the help, she told herself. There was no one else.

But that wasn’t really the reason. Not the whole reason anyway.

The real reason was that Gladys was getting old. She felt the truth of that when Arbutus got so bad and there was nothing Gladys could do about it. They’d ended Up marooned in Nathan’s apartment, helpless to decide their own fate. That was when she really Understood, one day she’d be dead and gone. In the meantime, she had to live with herself.

She couldn’t stand to think of leaving things so Unresolved. The burden of guilt and regret sat heavier and heavier on her shoulders. She had failed when Madeline was a child, failed to ever soften Joe’s heart, and that was wrong. He’d been wrong and she’d been powerless to change it. That was why she’d asked Madeline to come here. To make things right. Or at least more right. So far she wasn’t doing a very good job of it.