She thought about her small apartment, the 4 flights of stairs, the lift that worked 3 days out of 7, the patch of damp in the corner of the ceiling. She thought about the years of small jobs, stretched money, the careful independent life she had built from what had been available to her. She thought about what her mother had worked for at that table by the window, what her mother had given up so that she could have something more.
She put her hand on the folder.
“I will think about it,” she said. “I’m not saying yes yet. I need to think.”
“That is all I ask,” he said.
She stood. She picked up her bag. Then she did something she had not planned, something that surprised her as she did it.
She reached out and picked up the folder from the table. Not to read it that night, just to take it with her, to let it come home with her and sit on her table and be a thing she could look at in her own space, on her own time.
Mr. Caleb watched her pick it up. Something moved across his face that he did not try to hide.
“Good night,” she said.
“Good night, Rebecca,” he said.