Love for Sale

forget about the missing teacher. She wasn’t his responsibility.

    Howard hadn’t needed to worry about Mrs. Tarkington. She went immediately from dinner with the Chief of Police to Grace and Favor. As her noisy little car pulled up in the driveway, she saw the place in a different way than she had on her other visit. It had merely been an enormous old house then—something that housed the people she needed to enlist for help. Now she looked at it as a potential home for her old age.
    The noise of the automobile wheezing up the driveway had caught Lily’s attention, and she met Mrs. Tarkington at the door. “Come in, come in,“ Lily said. “It’s too cold to talk at the door. Is there something wrong? Have you heard from Miss Langston?”
    Lily ushered the principal into the library.
    “Nothing’s wrong at all and, no, I haven’t heard from Miss Langston,“ Mrs. Tarkington said. “I just had an early- dinner with Chief Walker at Mabel’s. He was asking about whether she often ate there, and happened to mention that Miss Phoebe Twinkle boarded with you.“
    “Indeed she does,“ Lily replied, wondering where this conversation was going.
    “Might you like to have another boarder?”
    “That depends on who it is, I suppose,“ Lily said.
    “Me.“
    “You’d leave your comfortable house near the school?“ Lily said with surprise.
    “I could rent it out. It’s not so dear to me now that my husband is gone. I’d like to rent or sell it to someone who could take better care of it. I’m not very good at dealing with periodic leaks in the roof and replacing windows that are too drafty.“
    “I’m sure we’d all love to have you here. Naturally, I’ll have to consult with my brother and Mr.and Mrs. Prinney, but I know they all like and respect you.“
    “Then let’s talk money, shall we?“ she said bluntly, smoothing her skirt down. “I’d want to be fed without cooking for myself. I’d like to have a room with my own bath, and enough space for some of my own furniture. A warm room, too.”
    What she couldn’t say to Lily was that she was coming up on her sixtieth birthday and didn’t want to live alone and possibly die on a Friday evening and be unnoticed until she didn’t turn up at school on Monday.
    She went on, “Could I see some of the rooms you have available?“
    “There are many on the third floor. They’re small, though, and they don’t have private bathrooms. It’s a long walk,“ Lily said with a smile. “But there are a few larger rooms on the second floor.”
    Mrs. Tarkington stood briskly and said, “Let’s look at them. Nobody is committing to this yet. That’s understood, isn’t it?“
    “Absolutely.”
    Mrs. Tarkington took a deep liking to one particular room that Lily suspected had once been Great-uncle Horatio’s aunt Flora’s. The furniture was awful—old-fashioned and heavy. Luckily, there were plenty of places it could be stored.
    “Most of this is terrible,“ Mrs. Tarkington said frankly, echoing Lily’s thought. “But I love the look of the big canopy-draped bed, and the white marble fireplace. Might I pay extra to keep the bed?“
    “Certainly you could keep the bed,“ Lily exclaimed. “But not pay for it. It would be a lot easier to leave it than move it. Nobody’s used the room since we moved here. I don’t know if it has enough large sheets, though.“
    “I can take care of that. Now, the bathroom is awfully dark. Could I hire someone to paint it a brighter color if I take the room?“
    “Robert’s turned into a fairly good painter, and I can’t imagine anybody “objecting to improving anything in here. I’d never even seen the bathroom until this evening. The Harbinger brothers are always looking for work as well.“
    “Speaking of it being evening, may I come up here tomorrow in the daylight and see the view?“
    “Of course. It should be lovely. My own room is the second to the right of this one, and I can see the river from it.”
    Mrs. Tarkington shook Lily’s hand and said, “I’ll be on my way now. I’m not very good at driving in full dark. Talk to the others about it. And I’ll give it a little more thought as well. Don’t worry whether I can afford it, Miss Brewster. My husband left me fairly well off and I’ve been saving my own money for a long time. My dear William insisted that I keep my own income for myself.”
    Lily was pleased and assumed the rest of the residents would be as well. Mrs. Tarkington was