Moira got there first. She sat at one of the low round tables meant for children, on a chair that put her knees nearly at her chin, and watched the lake through the tall windows, gray and flat and steaming in the cold, with a skin of ice along the breakwater. She had not slept well in two weeks and she knew it showed. She had put on lipstick in the car and then wiped it off, because it looked like she was trying.
Ayanna came in at two exactly, with Nyla beside her in a purple coat that fit. Moira noticed that first, the new coat, and was ashamed of herself for noticing. Nyla had a stack of books in her arms up to her chin, and when she saw Moira she stopped, and her face did something complicated, and then she said, "Hi, Miss Moira," in a careful voice, and went to the return slot and fed the books in one at a time, very slowly, as if each one needed a moment of privacy.
"She's been worried about you," Ayanna said, sitting down across the little table. She sat easily on the tiny chair, with her knees angled to one side, like someone used to making do with whatever furniture was offered. "She heard me on the phone with Dacia. I didn't tell her anything, but she's seven and she reads everything."
"You said that before."
"It's still true." Ayanna took the envelope out of her parka and put it on the table between them. "Eighteen ninety-seven, and a tip. Before you say anything."
Moira looked at it. It was a plain white envelope with 24.97 written on the front in the same small capitals as the napkin. She did not touch it.
"I can't take that."
"You can. You're choosing not to."
"Ayanna. I'm not taking twenty-five dollars from a woman who was living in a motel three weeks ago."
"And I'm not leaving it on a table to a woman who lost her job over my kid's dinner. So we've got a problem." Ayanna's voice was not angry. It was something firmer than angry, a kind of patience with a floor under it. "Let me tell you how I see it, and then you can tell me how you see it. You gave us a meal. That was a gift, and I took it, because my daughter was hungry and because you looked like you meant it. But I