"Well, I'm saying it as one," Ethel Beckwith said, and walked ahead of both of them through the automatic doors.
Stasia Kostka was in a room at the end of the east hall, a room with two beds, one of them empty and stripped, and a window that looked out on the parking lot and the flagpole and, beyond them, the dark line of the mountain. She was sitting in a vinyl armchair by the window with an afghan over her knees and a ball of red yarn in her lap and two needles going in her hands, and she was so small that for a second Calvert did not see her at all, only the yarn and the needles moving. She had thick glasses and white hair pulled back in a bun, and a face that had folded in on itself over the years into a thousand soft creases, and when Mick said, "Babcia," from the doorway, the needles stopped, and she turned her head toward his voice and her face opened up like a window.
"MichaΕ," she said. "On a Saturday. What did you do."
"Nothing. I didn't do anything." He crossed the room and bent down and kissed her cheek, and Calvert watched him do it, this square boy with the split eyebrow who had leaned over his table that morning and said take it down, and he had to look away for a second, at the empty bed. "I brought somebody," Mick said. "Two people. Babcia, this is Mrs. Beckwith. And her grandson. Calvert."
The old woman went very still.
"Beckwith," she said.
"Yes, ma'am," said Ethel. "Thurlow's wife. I don't think we've ever met. I'm sorry for that. I think that's my fault."
Stasia Kostka did not say anything for a long time. Then she held out one hand, palm up, toward the sound of Ethel's voice, and Ethel went and took it, and the two old women held hands across the afghan without speaking, and the needles lay crossed in the red yarn in Stasia's lap.