Then Ondine turned back to Bonner and said, "Will you come back?"
He had not expected it. He felt it in his chest like a misfire. "If you want me to."
"I don't know if I want you to. I want you to anyway. Does that make sense?"
"Yes, ma'am. It makes a lot of sense."
"I can't read letters so well anymore. The lines move. And I forget them. I'll read one in the morning and by supper I'm not sure it came." She looked at the notebook in her lap. "You could come and tell me instead. The useful things. Once a month. You could sit there in that terrible chair and tell me what you fixed."
He looked at Daria. Daria had lifted her head. Her eyes were red and swollen and absolutely unreadable.
"That's not only up to me," Bonner said. "That's partly up to your daughter."
Ondine looked at Daria, and Daria looked back, and some long conversation went between them that he was not a part of and did not try to follow.
"I'll think about it," Daria said finally. "Okay? That's what I can do. I'll think about it."
"That's fair," said Ondine. "That's more than fair." She closed her eyes. "Mr. Wenzel. Write it in my notebook before you go. Your name and the date. And that you came. I want to see it in the morning. Otherwise I won't be sure."
He took the green notebook from her lap, and the pen, and on the next clean page, in the square block capitals he had learned from forty years of writing parts orders, he wrote:
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 22. BONNER WENZEL CAME. YOU TOLD HIM. HE HEARD IT.