“Okay,” Delilah said.

Tennie Gulliver gave Delilah directions; she could walk from the wharf. Delilah slung her bag over her shoulder and walked through Nantucket town. The houses were dignified and old-fashioned; they had window boxes planted with geraniums and majestic front doors. There were lights coming on and cooking smells. Delilah crossed the cobblestones, she walked up brick sidewalks past galleries and restaurants and antique shops, an ice-cream parlor, a jewelry store.

Tennie Gulliver’s house was on Pine Street, just off Main. It was an ancient among the elderly; the plaque on the front of the house said it had been built in 1704. The house stooped and sagged. The shingles were mildewed and the white paint of the trim was flaking away.

Delilah dropped the big brass knocker and waited a long time, long enough that she began to wonder if the unthinkable had happened to Tennie Gulliver between the time she had hung up the phone and now. But finally there was the sound of the lock being undone and the door swung open and there was Tennie Gulliver, all eighty-five pounds of her, with her white, cottony hair and her shrunken apple face and her cane. Tennie Gulliver looked exactly as Delilah had expected (a bit of a disappointment, since Delilah loved to be taken by surprise)—like the old woman who lived in a shoe.

It was as though Delilah had not only traveled twelve hundred miles across the country but also a hundred and twenty years back in time. Tennie Gulliver lit her main room with candles and the kitchen with a dim overhead bulb. (“I need proper light when I’m cooking!” Tennie said.) There was radio, but no TV. A rotary phone, but no answering machine. A gas stove, but no microwave. Delilah’s room would be upstairs; there were in fact five bedrooms upstairs, and Delilah could have any one of them, Tennie said. Tennie’s bedroom was on the first floor; it was the den, converted, because Tennie could no longer negotiate the stairs.

“Okay!” Delilah said. She liked the idea of having her choice of five bedrooms, of inhabiting all five on successive nights, like a girl who lived in a castle.

Actually, there was something about being here on Nantucket on her own, in this old, old house with this old, old woman, that made Delilah feel not like an adult but like a child.

As if reading her mind, Tennie said, “How old are you?”

Delilah lied. “Nineteen.”

Tennie said, “Do you need a job?”

Delilah paused, thinking about her eight hundred and eighty-five remaining dollars. Despite her free rent, she would have to work. She had not thought about any particular job beyond her job of living deliberately. But she would have to make money deliberately.

She said, “I baby-sit.”

Tennie stared. Could she hear? Her ears were like small white shells, but they were unencumbered by the beige hearing aids that Delilah’s grandparents wore.

Delilah said, “Do you have grandchildren?”

Tennie said, “Vern’s last name is Snow. He’s the son I had with my first husband. The son I had with my second husband, Mr. Gulliver, Gully, lives in Sconset. He chops firewood for a living and should be avoided.”

Delilah nodded. Everybody had a thousand stories.

“I’m going to heat up a lobster pie. You’ll eat?”

“Yes,” Delilah said. “Thank you.” She lugged her backpack up the steep, narrow staircase. The five bedrooms upstairs were prim, spare, spinsterish, as appealing as five bedrooms in a convent or a nursing home. They were much alike, but Delilah claimed the only one with a double bed. The bed was about five feet off the ground; it was a bed for a giant. Delilah would need to stand on a chair just to climb up on top of its white chenille spread and lay her head on the stiff pillows. There was a nightstand with a dainty lamp made of milk glass wearing a fringed shade that looked like an old lady’s church hat. There was a bureau that had twenty-seven drawers, and next to the bureau was a dressing table that supported a triptych mirror, open like a book. Delilah sat at the dressing table and looked at herself in the triptych mirror. She looked at herself deliberately.

She was safe here.

Delilah woke up the next morning in a fresh mood. It was the first day of her new life.

She could do whatever she wanted. So this, she thought, was freedom. What did she want to do? What did she want to do, really? Go for a walk? Spend money on a restaurant breakfast? Lie in bed for an hour and read Cheever? She descended the stairs to find Tennie making buttermilk biscuits and bacon and brewing some wicked-smelling coffee.

Tennie said, “You’ll eat?”

Delilah breathed in, breathed out. It was amazing the obligation she felt, even to this woman whom she’d known only half a day. Did she want to eat breakfast with Tennie? She meant to stick to her guns, hold sacred her duty to herself. The bacon was crisp, the biscuits looked fluffy, and Tennie set out a pot of softened butter. There was cream for the coffee—real cream! Delilah’s mother bought only fat-free lightener, and hence Delilah had never learned to like coffee. And Delilah’s mother never cooked bacon. Full of nitrites, she said.

“Yes,” Delilah said.

From now on Delilah’s life would include bacon, and coffee with real cream and two teaspoons of sugar. And Delilah would get the biscuit recipe.

“You’ll go see Vern about the job?” Tennie said.

Delilah was confused. What job?

“Where?” she said.

“Lobster restaurant,” Tennie said. “In town. You can’t miss it.”

Delilah did not want to work in a restaurant. Dean Markbury waited tables at Denny’s, plunking down Grand Slam breakfasts and club sandwiches for two dollars an hour. He had to wear polyester pants. But what if Delilah had no choice?