Page 2

The physician’s note is in my apron pocket. It has been there two days and I have read it eleven times, always out loud, in his voice, because that is the only way I can get through it. I flatten it on my knee. The paper has gone soft at the folds.

“The patient continues to decline.” I look up. “The patient. That man has eaten four dinners at your table.”

“Nora.”

“No fever. The organs are sound, so far as I can determine. I do not know what is wrong with him.”

“He’s honest.”

“He’s paid to know. If he doesn’t, he can come back and look again, and I’ll pay him in soup.”

“He came twice.”

“Then a third time won’t kill him.” I turn the paper over, which tells me nothing, because there is nothing on the back. “Read the rest, you’re going to say.”

“Read the rest.”

“The patient sleeps a great deal and reports that the sleep is restful. He is glad of the visits.”

That is the piece I keep snagging on. I don’t like it, and I can’t say what about it I don’t like. Every time, my shoulders climb toward my ears.

“You do sleep a lot,” I say.

“It’s restful. He wrote it down.”

“You never used to sleep. You used to bang on my door at five in the morning with a ladle.”

“I was younger.”

“Who visits you? When I’m at market.”

He has to think about it.

He searches for a name and cannot find one, and that frightens me more than the note did.

“People come,” he says. “Neighbors. You.”

“I’m not neighbors.”

“You’re worse.”

I get him water from the jug on the sill, and it is cold enough to ache in my fingers. He drinks half. I say nothing about the half.

“Where did the entry fee come from?”

He has had all day to get to it, and he waited until the mallet was out of my hand.

I thought I had got it past him. I should have known better; he taught me to count. I’m caught, and I’m so relieved about it I’m ashamed.

“The bell,” I say.

He closes his eyes.

“She paid the fee, and she’s kept this house since July. That’s all of her.” The peat has caught at one corner and I watch it instead of him. “A bell buys weeks. A bride buys a year. I’m entered. Lot fifty-one, ten o’clock.”

“Nora.”

“The house takes a twelfth of whatever I go for. Forty-nine comes to me, into my hand, and nobody can touch it. The rest goes where I say, and I’m saying half to you and half to the Order, so their physician rides out here every month with the medicines.” My hands have found the edge of the table and I make them let go of it. “He’s the one the city sends for when the local man gives up. And he’s given up.”