“Four in the morning,” I said.

“Four thirty.” She smoothed the front of her sweater, though it had no wrinkles in it.

“That’s what we said.”

By then she was at the linen closet with the door swung wide, counting out washcloths.

Six, and then six more.

“This house,” she said, not turning around.

“It just goes on and on, doesn’t it?

Not everybody could keep up with a house this size.”