After Tess drove away, Mara found a funeral program under a chair and another beneath the table June had used for keys. By six o'clock she had stacked the chairs at the hall wall and carried three pans of food into the kitchen. The house looked less crowded and more exposed. June had kept a basket by the back door for people who arrived carrying a child or a bag too heavy for one hand. Mara had emptied it during the illness because nobody came then. She could still see the pale patch where it had stood.
During June's final week Mara had slept on the sitting-room sofa three nights. She had told Tess not to come too early in the mornings because June tired easily; Tess had heard that as an order to stay away. On the second night June had woken and asked whether the people she had promised to call knew she was ill. Mara had said she would send a message. June closed her eyes before Mara asked which people. The next day there were appointments in June's kitchen calendar but no names beside two of them. Mara had canceled what she could identify and left the blank lines alone. She did not know now whether Friday had been one of those obligations.
She went to the kitchen calendar. The page for this week had only a square drawn around Friday. June had written no name there. Mara photographed it and sent it to Tess with the words, Friday marked here too. No place written. Tess answered with a single check mark. Mara could not tell whether that meant Tess had received it or that she was holding back an accusation until later.
Tess's photograph arrived while Mara was washing a serving spoon. She dried her hands before opening it. Six crossed names. Tess's name with Friday below. Mara enlarged the fifth line. Nora. June had used that name on a transport slip the winter Alma left Owen. Mara had spoken to Nora by phone before the pharmacy handoff and taken her arrival call afterward. Nora had asked which entrance the driver would use; Mara had given the pharmacy-lot entrance from her dispatch desk.
Mara had told Tess she didn't know the whole route. That was true. She had also called it an errand as if she had made one. She had arranged rides for June for years. Some were simple: a woman missed the last bus, June had a spare bed, Mara knew a driver. Others came with instructions about who should not be told a destination. Mara had learned to put addresses on slips rather than in messages. She had taken pride in being the person who remembered which front door had a broken step and which host worked nights. She had never asked June to show her every name in one place.
Nora's handoff had seemed simple while it was happening. Mara had been dispatching two cars that morning; she asked Nora to wait near the pharmacy with groceries so Alma could reach a warm place without standing alone beside the road. The driver took Alma from the clinic to that handoff. Nora called Mara when Alma was inside with the host June had arranged. Mara had been grateful for the call and for not having to leave her desk. She could not remember asking Alma whether she wanted Nora to know the handoff at all. June had made the plan and Alma had used it. Mara had let the useful outcome answer a question she hadn't put to her.
In June's bedroom, the top drawer held receipts, a packet of safety pins, two envelopes marked keep, and a small ring of keys. Mara looked at the keys without touching them. She had promised Tess she would find the slip, not search for a way into the case Tess had taken. But the photograph had made Friday feel like an appointment someone else could keep even after June was gone.
She opened the cupboard beside June's desk. A gray folder held the duplicate slips June had asked Mara to file each month. Mara had never called them records in Tess's hearing. A ride written on a small paper felt more like a favor than a system, and Mara knew how that distinction would sound if Tess said it back to her.
The winter slip had Alma's first name, a pickup at the clinic side door, and a handoff near the pharmacy. Nora appeared in the last box. Next to it June had written a number that ended in forty-two. Mara found another slip from a late spring errand with a different destination and the same last four digits. The courier name on that one was harder to read. June had crossed over part of it when she added the final fare. Mara set the two slips side by side and did not call the matching number proof of anything yet. June had often reused a dispatch phone for several helpers. She could ask the host from that spring run whether it was the same woman.
Mara made two piles on the kitchen table: slips she could explain without asking anyone else's permission, and slips with a person or address she had promised to keep private. The first pile was thin. She pictured Tess seeing it and assuming that was all Mara had done. She could say there were more but leave them face down until they knew why Friday was on the list. Or she could take the whole folder to Tess and watch her read other women's routes on a night when Tess felt personally named.
She lifted one slip from the second pile. A host's phone number was written across the bottom, beside a note to call after dark because the host worked a late shift. The woman on that line had once told Mara she could keep a guest for only one night; June had asked for a second, and Mara had made the call. If Tess saw the number now, she might ring to ask about a name on the list. The host had not offered to become a witness to June's papers. Mara put the slip face down again.
The front door opened before Mara chose. She had forgotten to lock it after the last mourner left. A neighbor from across the street stood with June's dish towel in her hand.
“This went home in my bag,” the woman said. “I thought you might need it.”
Mara recognized her from the service but not from the years before. She took the towel. “Thank you.”
The woman saw the slips on the table. Her gaze moved away at once. “June used to tell me where to put my car if I was picking someone up. I never knew who until I got there.”
Mara folded the towel. “She liked to make a plan.”
“Sometimes she changed it while I was driving.” The woman gave a small, unsteady smile. “You always answered when I called.”
Mara remembered three nights of that voice on the phone. She had not known the woman by sight. “I was glad you called.”
After she left, Mara locked the door. Tess had seen June leave family meals to answer those calls. Mara had answered drivers waiting outside with their heaters running. She put the towel in the wash and went back to the slips.
She called Tess. It went to voice mail. Mara said, “I found one slip with Nora's name. I'm bringing a copy tomorrow. I found another contact that repeats, but it might be a shared phone. Call when you can.” She almost added that she had more slips. Tess would hear the pause she left instead. Mara ended the message and laid all the papers back in the gray folder except for the two she would show.
In the narrow bedroom, June's cardigan hung behind the door. Mara had left it there because the hooks looked wrong empty. She put the key ring and the envelopes marked keep into a small box of funeral effects; one small brass key had a faded red tag, but she did not know which lock it fitted. She would take the box to Tess with the slips. She could not give Tess an answer to Friday. She could decide how much of June's work Tess would see tomorrow, and that frightened her more than the page.