Lena's POV
Mara came at noon precisely.
I heard her before I saw her-a gentle rap at the door, unhurried, and then a small, compact woman in her mid-fifties with hair like a silver-streaked bird’s nest pulled back from her face and the sort of calm competence in her movements that signaled she had been doing whatever this was for a long time.
She was carrying a tray: soup, bread, a tiny teapot. She placed it on the writing desk without fuss, straightened once, and looked at me.
Her eyes were warm, and that more than anything else that had happened to me since arriving had surprised me.
"You must be Lena," she said.
"That's me."
She nodded, as though verifying something she had already known. "I'm Mara. I keep the house." She said it simply, with no art to it, no pride. Fact.
"He me
