The first time Mrs. Whitaker called me, I was standing in a grocery store parking lot in the rain, crying into a bag of frozen peas.

I wasn’t crying about the peas. I was crying because I had exactly forty-one dollars in my checking account, a nine-year-old daughter waiting in the car, and a husband who had moved out three weeks earlier and taken the good vacuum with him.

I remember that part the most. The vacuum. Of all the things to take. I was starting a cleaning business, and he knew it, and he took the vacuum.

Ezoic
I had spent that afternoon taping handwritten ads to every bulletin board in town. The library. The laundromat. The coffee shop. The corkboard by the grocery store exit, next to the lost cat posters and the guy who sold firewood. I wrote each ad by hand on an index card, in my best handwriting, with little tear-off tabs at the bottom.

HOUSE CLEANING. Honest, reliable, thorough. References available. Call Carly.

The references were two neighbors and my old boss at the dental office where I’d worked the front desk before Willa was born. It wasn’t much. But it was true.

My phone rang while I was loading the groceries into the trunk. I almost didn’t answer. I didn’t recognize the number, and I thought it might be Darren’s lawyer.

“Hello?”

“Is this Carly? The house cleaner?” It was an older woman’s voice. Crisp and careful. The kind of voice that sounded like it had never once said “um.”

“Yes. Yes, this is Carly.”

“My name is Margaret Whitaker. I saw your card at the library. I have a house on Linden Street. Four bedrooms, three baths. I need someone once a week. Are you available on Thursdays?”

I was available every day of the week. I was available at three in the morning if she wanted. But I tried to sound like a professional.

“Let me check,” I said. I stood there in the rain holding my phone and counted to five. “Yes. I have Thursdays open.”