Coffee costs four dollars at the shop in town.

This was free and tasted like it.

He reached into his coat pocket and put a square of coffee cake in my hand, wrapped in wax paper.

“She made it.

She’ll ask me whether you ate.”

I ate it standing in the gravel, which is not how I was raised.

Then he walked inside and I followed, because there was nothing else to do with my hands.

The library smelled of the lemon polish my mother used to order by the case.