44 Charles Street

“What grade are you in?” she asked as he took two bites of the banana, which puffed out his cheeks, and she smiled. It took him a minute to answer.

“Second. I changed schools this year. I liked my old one better, but my mom says it’s too far away.” As he said it, Chris walked into the room and took in the scene. He smiled as he looked at his son, and then at Francesca when he saw that she had fed him. She hadn’t seen him look that happy since he moved in. Suddenly he looked relaxed, friendly, and warm. It was obvious that he was crazy about the boy, and very proud.

“Thank you for feeding him. He got away while I was in the shower.”

“We’ve been having a very nice time,” Francesca reassured him, and Ian looked pleased. He’d been having a good time too. He seemed very self-sufficient and totally at ease with adults.

“We’re going to the zoo,” Ian told Francesca. “They have a new polar bear, and a kangaroo.”

“That sounds like fun to me,” Francesca said easily, as Chris made some of the eggs he had bought, and he fried one for Ian too.

“Do you want to come?” Ian asked her happily, and she smiled.

“I’d love to, but I have to work.”

“What do you do?” Ian asked her.

“I have an art gallery a few blocks from here,” she explained to him. “I sell paintings. You can come to see it if you like.”

“Maybe we will,” Chris said as he set the egg down in front of Ian, and then sat down next to him with his own. And then Francesca went back to reading her e-mail while they ate. She’d had another response to the ad, from a woman in Vermont who said she was looking for a pied-à-terre in New York, and was interested in seeing the room that Francesca was renting. She had given her phone number, and said that she hoped it was still available and that Francesca would call. Francesca jotted it down along with another one, but the woman from Vermont sounded more appealing, and it didn’t sound as though she would be there all the time, which might be good. It was very comfortable now the way things were. And Ian seemed like a pleasant addition to the group. He was obviously a nice kid.

She chatted with him again for a few minutes, wished them a fun time at the zoo, and went back upstairs. They had already left by the time she went out.

She had a busy day at the gallery after that and sold another painting. They had been selling well for months—the problem was that their prices weren’t high enough to make much of a profit. She had been thinking of raising them again, and Avery insisted that she should.

It was midafternoon when Francesca remembered the woman in Vermont who had responded to her ad. She dialed the number, and a young woman answered. She sounded about Francesca’s age, and she was cheery and pleasant on the phone. Francesca told her the unit was still available and described it as best she could, without glorifying it. She said that the room was small, and it was a studio, had a pretty view of the garden, and was next to the kitchen, and it had its own bath.

The woman’s name was Marya Davis, and she said it sounded perfect for her. She didn’t need a lot of space, and she said she liked to use the kitchen a lot, and would that be a problem?

“No, I work till seven every night, six days a week, so I’m not home much, and neither are the other tenants. One works at home some of the time, but he keeps to himself. And the other tenant just graduated from college, is a teacher, and goes out almost every night. The house is pretty quiet, and none of us use the kitchen much. I’m usually too tired to cook and just make a salad, or buy something at the deli on the way home. And the others do the same, so the kitchen is all yours.” Neither of her tenants had cooked dinner since they moved in, and she hardly saw them.

“That would be wonderful. I could come down from Vermont next week to see it, if that’s all right with you. Do you think it can wait till then?” Marya asked, sounding worried, and Francesca laughed.

“No one’s beating down my door. I have someone else to call today, but I spoke to you first, so I’ll give you priority on it. When do you want to come?”

“Would Wednesday work for you?” she asked hopefully.

“That would be great.” They set a time, and Francesca jotted it down so she wouldn’t forget if she got busy. And then they hung up. The woman had sounded very pleasant on the phone. And the person she called afterward had found something else. It was already early February, and it had taken her all this time to find two good tenants, and maybe now finally a third. She hadn’t expected it to take this long. But she had been very cautious about who she showed it to, and no one else had suited her except Eileen and Chris, and now maybe this woman who wanted a pied-à-terre. She had mentioned that she was recently widowed and wanted to spend time in New York. And winters in Vermont were hard.