She took something from her blazer pocket and held it out. It was an index card, soft as felt, folded once, gone gray at the creases. When he unfolded it there were five words on it in square block capitals that he did not try to read.
"I carried that for eighteen years," she said. "I'd like it back by spring, please." She held his eyes. "Tuesday nights. Seven o'clock. Library, lower level, Room B. Shawnda's still there. I called her yesterday. I told her I'd be coming back on Tuesdays myself, if she'd have me."
"I can't afford—"
"It's free. It's always been free. That's the whole point of it." She opened the door for him. "Go wash my cars, Kade."
On Tuesday night Imogene Johnson drove her husband to the library.
It was the first time she had driven anywhere after dark that was farther than the Kroger, and she did it with the seat all the way up and both hands at the top of the wheel and her purse, at last, on the floor behind her, because Arvel had pointed out that it would not fit between her and the airbag. She went down Frederica at exactly the speed limit. At every intersection she said, "Clear on the right," out loud, the way he had taught her in the church lot, and Arvel, who could not see whether it was or not, said, "Thank you, Immy," every time, as if she had handed him something.
She parked in the library lot between two other cars, and the camera showed her the lines, and she followed them, and when she put it in park she let out a breath that seemed to have been in her since August.
"Well," she said. "I'll be out here."
"Come in. It's warm."
"I'm going to sit in my car," said Imogene Johnson, "and listen to my radio, in my car." She took a paperback out of her coat pocket and turned on the dome light. "Go on."
The lower level smelled the way it had always smelled, of carpet glue and radiator heat and the burnt coffee in the urn by the stairs. Arvel did not need to see it. He went down the hall with one hand trailing along the wall, past the restrooms and the room where the knitting club met, and counted the doors, and stopped at the third one, and pushed it open, and the light inside was the same humming fluorescent light, and somebody stood up from the table as he came in.