Rae called while Maya was in the break room at the center.
“Why is your flashlight with the cereal?”
“So I can find it.”
“You have three boxes of the kind I like.”
“You still eat it.”
“I eat other things.”
Maya thought of the bowl on the dashboard. “Sometimes.”
A cupboard shut. Rae was at Maya's house, where she'd promised to be. She had a key. She'd had a key since moving out, and Maya had never mentioned that the spare still lay in the same place because she wanted her daughter to use it without asking.
The center's break room smelled of somebody's reheated garlic. Maya was holding a cup of tea she'd forgotten to drink. She had come in early, added the shared-batch concern and the time she'd first seen the failed part to her statement, and given Rae's work number. Imani had passed the information to the fire investigator. That was done. The thing she could not report was that her own house now felt like a room on a screen.
“I've got it,” Rae said. “Give me a minute.”
Maya heard footsteps change from the kitchen floor to the hall carpet. A tool bag touched down.
“You know you can tell me you want me to come over,” Rae said.
“I wanted the heater checked.”
“I know. You can want both.”
Maya smiled. The little ache beneath it was old. She wanted Rae to sit in the kitchen and eat cereal at ten at night. She wanted to hear about somebody ridiculous on a job, a movie she'd seen, the new neighbor who played music through the wall. Instead she usually asked whether the van had fuel and when Rae would go home.
“I'd like you to come Sunday,” she said.
“I might be working.”
“After work.”
“I might be very bad company.”
“I have practice.”
Rae laughed. Maya could hear her unzipping the bag.
For a few minutes the conversation went quiet while she examined the heater. Maya did not ask a question every time the silence began. She listened to the familiar little sounds of her house: the refrigerator, the loose floorboard near the bedroom, rain against the window.
Then Rae said, “There may be some heat damage near this control. It's the same batch. I'm taking the heater out of use.”
“Do you need anything?”
“No. I can do this without running it. You won't have that heat tonight.”
“I have blankets.”
“You have a blanket with holes in it.”
“You gave me that.”
“I was nine. My standards have improved.”
Maya looked up at the break-room clock. A minute had gone by while her daughter talked about a blanket. It was such a good use of a minute that it hurt.
Rae shifted the phone. Her pen scratched over paper.
“I'm putting what I've seen in the book. If somebody comes tomorrow, they shouldn't have to ask you what I did.”
“Will you leave a note?”
“Yes.”
“Is the house safe?”
The scratching stopped.
“Mom. I can tell you what I've taken out of service. I can't tell you what the whole house will do for the rest of your life.”
“I meant tonight.”
“I know.” Rae sounded tired rather than angry. “I think this was the right thing to do. I wouldn't put it back on.”
Maya drank her tea. It was almost cold.
Rae went to the bedroom to check where the unit's label had been recorded. A switch clicked. “You still have the beach picture.”
“It's a good picture.”
“I'm squinting. You're wearing the hat I hated.”
“You were sunburned.”
“I was angry because you wouldn't let me swim after dark.”
“You were eleven.”
“Dad said he'd watch.”
Maya remembered him standing at the water's edge with all three pairs of shoes held above the tide. Rae had been furious, but later the sand had cooled and she'd let Elias carry her up the path. She had called down to Maya from his shoulder, telling her to hurry.
“He said a lot of things,” Maya said.
“He did watch.”
Rae's defense was quick and small. Maya had earned it by making the wrong remark.
“Yes,” she said. “He did.”
“Once I went too far out, he was in before I could yell properly. Clothes and all. I thought you were going to kill him.”
“I was considering it.”
“I liked that shirt. He ruined it.”
They both laughed. Maya could see him walking up the beach with wet cuffs and Rae's hands locked around his neck. It was hard to hold that man beside the one who had let Nora wait for an explanation. She had loved both. Rae still did.
The break-room door opened. A colleague came in and took a mug from the rack.
“I need to get back,” Maya told Rae. “Finish what you're doing, then go home. Don't wait for me.”
“I'll call when I'm done.”
“Call from outside.”
There was a pause. “All right.”
Maya almost added that she knew Rae understood her job. Rae knew that too. She said thank you instead.
At the desk, ordinary calls came in. A broken gate. A pan forgotten on a stove. A woman frightened by a sound in the next apartment who discovered the tenant had dropped a shelf.
Maya answered them in order.
At eleven fourteen her cell phone lit with Rae's message: Heater off. Writing note. Leaving in a minute.
Maya typed, Good.
She added a heart and felt silly. She left it.
At 11:17 the direct line rang.