PART 2 — THE ROLL OF QUARTERS
The young nurse came into the kitchen where Rosa was washing dishes and set a roll of quarters on the counter. Kent was standing in the doorway, wine glass in hand. She turned around, looked him dead in the eye, and the first thing she said made him set that glass down.
Twelve years ago, she said, I was a little girl. My mother had three of us and no money and nowhere warm to go, and one night she brought us into a laundromat at eleven oclock, just to get out of the cold.
The woman who ran it did not ask any questions. She let them wash for free, every single week, two whole winters, and kept the heat on late just for them so three children would have somewhere warm to sit.
The laundromat Kent called the sock store had kept three freezing children warm for two winters, and one of them had grown up to become a nurse because somebody once showed her that strangers could be kind.
I never forgot her face, the young nurse said. I became a nurse because of the woman in that laundromat. Tonight I walked in and there she was, handing out tamales, and I could not believe it.
She picked the roll of quarters back up and pressed it into Rosas wet hands. The first week we could finally pay, she said, I wanted to bring you your quarters. It took me twelve years to find you.
Kent, the corporate attorney who an hour before had said he bills more in an hour than Rosas whole dryer row makes in a week, could not say a word.
Rosa just hugged the young woman and told her to keep her quarters, that watching her grow into a nurse was payment enough.
She had never told a soul what she did all those winters. Not one person at that Christmas dinner had known.
Kent calls it the sock store. To one nurse in that town, it is the warmest place she has ever been, and the woman who ran it is the reason she spends her life taking care of other people now.