I had a key to her house, yet I still asked before taking a glass from the cabinet.
When I started working for her, my daughter, Willa, was nine.
I’d just separated from her father and was trying to fit enough cleaning jobs between school drop-off and pickup to keep us going.
Mrs.
Whitaker had called after spotting one of my handwritten ads.
That Thursday appointment became the one job I could always rely on.
Then, several weeks ago, she told me she was moving closer to her daughter.
"I’m tired of having a whole upstairs I don’t use," she said.
We laughed, but cleaning the house for the last time was more difficult than I expected.
There were pale rectangles where the pictures had hung.
Her kitchen calendar was gone.
I kept reaching to move things that weren’t there anymore.
When I returned her key, she closed my fingers around it.
