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“In a bingo hall?” She says it to her own card, not looking up either. We’re both being very interested in our cards all of a sudden.

“In my life.” I don’t plan to say it. It comes out low, and this time I do look over at her when it does.

She looks away, quick, and nods at something Fran says like Fran has her whole attention, which Fran does not. “Luke.”

It’s half warning and half something softer, and her cheeks have gone a shade she’ll blame on the fluorescent lights.

“I think we need to talk about the other night.” I say it low, still watching the side of her face, daubing a number I’m not sure even got called.

Delores cranks the cage and calls the next one, and the whole table snaps back into the seriousness from earlier, and whatever Olivia was about to say goes under it.

She doesn’t argue. She just nods, once, and lets the back of her head rest, for half a second, against my arm on the chair.

Half a second. That’s all. Then she straightens and daubs a number she’s about to miss, and I sit there feeling like I won something a whole lot bigger than a diner gift card.

The talk turns, the way it’s been turning all night, to the one subject Dottie keeps steering it away from.

Between games, there’s a lull. Somebody two tables over just took the last round, Delores is reloading the cage one ball at a time, and the whole room loosens. Coffee gets refilled. Daubers get capped. The focus drains out of everyone at once and the talking starts back up like a faucet.

Ruth uses the break to make her move.

“You know,” she says, patting the table in front of Dottie, “there’s a one-bedroom opening on the second floor. West side. Best light in the building.”

“Somebody named Dottie should snap that up,” Carol says, not even looking up from squaring her cards into a stack.

“We keep telling her.” Fran leans across the table toward Olivia, like she’s being read into a long-running operation. “We’re all here. Every last one of us. Husbands gone, God rest them, and here we are having the time of our lives, and she’s the only holdout.” She taps the table for emphasis. “Bingo four nights a week, if you live here. You know.”

“One day, ladies.” Dottie doesn’t look up. She’s lining her chips into a neat row she doesn’t need yet, giving her hands something to do.

She says it lightly, but there’s an edge under it, a little fence going up, and I catch it, because I know exactly what “one day” means and exactly why it isn’t today.

It isn’t today because of me. Because of Bo.

This, a whole building full of her people, four nights of bingo. She gave it up so a twenty-two-year-old with a newborn and no idea what he was doing wouldn’t have to do it alone.

And she’s still giving it up. Every weekend I’m on shift, every Sunday I miss, Dottie’s there, because Bo doesn’t do well with just anyone. That’s the hard truth of it. He gets attached slow and trusts even slower, and the list of people who can be with him when he comes apart is short. Me. Dottie. His aide at school. Theo’s mom, on a good day.

It’s a short list. And I’ve told myself for years that it can’t get any longer.

But Bo’s ten now. Not a newborn. He’s got words for most of what he needs. A system, a school that gets it. Maybe the list can grow. Maybe it’s time Dottie and I have that conversation again, the one I keep flinching away from, even though I don’t want to lose her from my dinner table any more than she wants to leave it. It’s time I let her live her life.

“Well, forget moving in,” Carol says, waving a hand. “Are you at least coming shopping Saturday? The outlet mall. Ruth’s driving, God help us.”

“Can’t Saturday,” Dottie says. “Luke’s on shift. I’ve got Bo.”

And it’s nothing. A normal sentence. The kind she says every week, the kind that quietly runs her whole life. I’ve got Bo. The reason she can’t shop, can’t move, can’t move in to the assisted living center with her friends.

Then Olivia, next to me, sets down her dauber.

“I can watch him,” she says. “Saturday, while you go.”

The table falls silent.

Ruth’s eyebrows lift. Carol glances at Dottie. Fran looks at Olivia like she just offered a kidney, because to this table, that’s about the size of it. These women have known Bo his whole life. They know the list is four names long and none of them are even on it. And here’s a woman Dottie met in a hallway two weeks ago, offering to take a shift.

Olivia feels it. I watch the weight of what she said land on a room that understands it better than she does.

She turns to me. “If that’s okay with you, of course.”