Diane worked part-time at the factory now, on reduced hours, and the rhythm of her working days became the rhythm of the house. She left in the morning, after Leo had gone to school or, on Saturdays, after breakfast, and she came home in the afternoon, tired at day's end but steady, the way a person is tired when they have done a day's honest work and have a home to come back to. Leo met her at the trailer door most days, with a glass of water, because that was what he had done when she was ill, bringing her water when she could not get it herself, and he had kept doing it, not because she needed it now in the same way, but because it was their habit, and because habits, when they are kind, are worth keeping.
The pantry was stocked. Leo checked it sometimes, not anxiously, not the way he had checked it in July, when he opened the door and found nothing and closed it again quickly, as if the emptiness might be catching. Now he opened it and saw cans and boxes and bags, arranged in rows, not fancy, not overflowing, but enough, and he would close the door again, satisfied, and go on with whatever he had been doing. The lights were on past Friday, and every Friday after, and that fact, which had once been a deadline hanging over their lives, had become an ordinary fact, like the sun rising, like the trailer's fan turning, like his mother's footsteps on the steps Tank had patched.
Diane's days at the factory had a shape now, and Leo liked knowing the shape of them, the way he liked knowing the shape of a road he had walked many times. She worked at a bench near a window, on reduced hours, doing work she knew well, and her supervisor, a cautious man who had at first been unsure about taking her back, had come to rely on her steadiness, because Diane did not rush, and she did not complain, and she did the work right the first time, which saved everyone time in the end. Her coworkers, who had at first asked after her health in careful, sideways ways, now asked her about ordinary things — about Leo, about the diner, about whether it would rain on the weekend — and Diane answered in ordinary ways, and the ordinariness of it was a gift, because it meant she was not "the sick woman" anymore, but simply Diane, who worked at the factory, and who went home at the end of the day to her son. She came home with her hair a little flattened from the factory air, and her hands a little tired, and she would wash them at the trailer sink, and change out of her work clothes, and sit for a moment in the chair by the window, with her eyes closed, not asleep, just resting, and Leo would bring her water, and she would open her eyes, and smile, and say, "Thank you, Leo," and the day would settle into evening, the way days are supposed to settle, when the work is done and home is waiting.
One evening, at the kitchen table, Diane paid the month's electric bill herself, in full. She sat with the bill spread out in front of her, and a pen in her hand, and her chequebook open, and she wrote the amount carefully, in her neat handwriting, and she checked it twice, and she signed her name, and she put the bill and the cheque in an envelope, and she sealed it, and she set it aside for the morning post. Leo watched her from across the table, doing his homework, and he did not interrupt her, because he understood that this was a moment that belonged to her, in the same way that polishing a fender belonged to him. When she had finished, she took the receipt from the month before, and the receipt from the month before that, and she filed the new bill's copy beside the old PAID receipt, the one from the utility office, the one that had the word PAID on it in big letters, the one Leo had read aloud on the day it was taped to the fridge.
She looked at the two receipts side by side, the old one and the new one, and she was quiet for a moment, and then she said, "There. That's ours now." She did not say it loudly. She did not say it to anyone in particular. She said it to the kitchen, to the table, to the trailer, to herself, and Leo heard it, and he understood what she meant: that the help they had received had not made them dependent, it had made them able, and that being able to pay their own bill, in full, on time, was not a small thing, but a large thing, and a thing worth marking, even if the marking was only a quiet sentence at a kitchen table.
After the bill was filed, Diane cooked supper, and Leo helped her, peeling potatoes at the counter, slowly, because peeling was a job that rewarded patience, and because he had learned, from polishing chrome, that slow work was often the best work. They talked while they cooked, about school, about the factory, about the diner, about whether the trailer's fan would last through another summer, and about nothing in particular, which is the best kind of talking, because it means there is nothing urgent to discuss, and nothing frightening to plan for, and the talk can wander where it likes. Diane told Leo about a woman at the factory who had a son his age, and who had asked about Leo's diner job, and Leo told Diane about a boy at school who had a bicycle with a squeaky wheel, and how he had told the boy, very seriously, that the wheel probably needed oil, and the boy had laughed, and then had oiled it, and it had stopped squeaking, and Leo had felt, for a moment, like Wrench must feel, when a machine he has fixed runs right. They