Samuel asked her to dinner on a Thursday. It was not phrased as a question, exactly. They were standing in the corridor outside his office—the same corridor she had walked through a hundred times, past the bulletin board with its posted schedules and community notices, past the window that looked out onto the small garden Ruth had started in the side yard, past the fire extinguisher that had been there since before Mira arrived and would be there long after she was gone. Samuel had just finishe...