“And you stayed.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She looked out the window, at the lawn, where two girls in pajamas were about to come outside and ruin the wet grass.

“Because I was twelve when my mother died,” she said, “and my father worked nights, and there was a woman on our floor named Mrs.

Okafor who used to knock on our door at seven every evening with a plate, for two years, and never once said anything about why.

She just knocked.