“Old women don’t need boyfriends, Mom. They need nursing homes.”

My daughter said it while she folded my mother’s quilt into a moving box. I stood there with a dish towel in my hand, watching her pack my kitchen as if she had already decided I was leaving.

The boyfriend she meant was Otto Dunaway, the man I had almost married twenty-two years earlier. He had found me again at the senior center dance. Then, after my daughter told me he would walk out on me again, I went back to the next dance anyway.

I am seventy-six. For forty-one years, I counted other people’s money at a little bank in Port Sanilac. “Count it twice, hand it over once,” my first boss told me. I did. I was less careful with the decisions that belonged to my own life.

My husband, Ned, strung power lines for the electric co-op. In 1979, we bought a little house on the bluff over Lake Huron. “Best $41,000 we ever spent,” Ned used to say. It is paid off, in my name alone, and worth $640,000 now.

My mother pieced her quilt from feed sacks. It had been on the back of my couch since 1981. Ned died in January of 2002, shoveling the drive. Our only child, Selena, was twenty-six. That spring, I got her a job in the bank’s loan office, down the hall from my window.

The next year, Otto began coming to my window every Friday. He was a widowed bean farmer. He learned I took my coffee black with one ice cube. At the VFW dances, the band always closed with our song, Anne Murray’s “Could I Have This Dance.”

In August of 2004, halfway down the stairs to the beach, he asked me to marry him.

“Let me think about it till Christmas,” I said.

“Till Christmas?” he said.

“I’m not saying no.”

“I know. I’ll wait.”

I was fifty-four, and scared. I put things off. I still do. In October, Otto stopped coming to my window. I heard he’d moved his account to a bank two towns over. By November, his farm had sold at auction, and he was gone to his son’s in Arizona.

“I ran into him at the gas station, Mom,” Selena told me. “He said he’s done waiting on you.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“Just that he was done.”

I did not call him. I told myself I had made him wait, and I had my pride. Those were both true. I let them stand in for an explanation.

This spring, I slipped on those same beach stairs and bruised my hip. In July, Otto came into the Friday dance with a cane. His son had retired back to Michigan, and Otto had come home too. He paid at the door from the same brown wallet, still held shut with a rubber band. His sticker said Otto, in shaky letters.

The band started our song.

“You remembered,” I said.

“I remember everything, Es.”

His hearing aid whistled through the whole song. Neither of us said much. When the music ended, he looked at me and said, “I figured you’d never want to see me again. After everything.”

“After you left, you mean.”

He gave me a puzzled look. “Let’s leave 2004 where it is.”

We were both too proud to dig it up that night. For eight Fridays, Otto had my coffee ready: black, one ice cube. My friend Maudie, who had worked the next window at the bank for thirty years, drove me.

“Look at you, Es,” she said. “Pink as a teller on her first day.”

“Don’t start.”

“I’m only saying what I see.”

One night, Otto looked down at his shoes. “I’m not the man I was, Es. A Social Security check and a Buick.”

“I never cared one bit about your money.”

“I know what you say.”

“I mean it.”

He did not answer. I knew that old habit of his, looking down when he didn’t want to say what he was thinking. I let it go, and he let me.

In September, the senior center posted a picture of us dancing on its Facebook page. The next morning, Selena’s truck was in my driveway. Her husband, Ricky, stayed in the cab with the motor running. Selena carried in boxes from the party store that still smelled like beer.

“Hon, what on earth are you doing?”

“You fell on those stairs, Mom. Next time nobody finds you for two days.”

“I fell once.”

“Once is enough.”

She had already called a nursing home inland and asked them to hold a room.

Then she lifted my mother’s quilt from the couch and started folding it.

“Old women don’t need boyfriends, Mom. They need nursing homes.”

I stood there with the dish towel in my hand.

“He walked out on you once,” she said. “He’ll do it again.”

“Otto came back.”

“He’s after Daddy’s house. He always was.”

She slid a paper across my kitchen table. It was meant to transfer the house to her.

“Sign it before the nursing home takes it,” she said. “Ricky and I will keep it in the family.”

“It’s my house, hon.”

“Not for long.”

At the door, she told me she had already spoken to the woman at the senior center’s front desk. If I showed up there again, the woman would call Selena. They had gone to high school together. I knew she probably would.

I did not sign the paper. I did not unpack the boxes, either. That week, I counted them every night. Eleven. Twice. I didn’t call Otto. I was ashamed, though I could not have said of what without blaming myself.

Maybe Selena was right, I thought. Maybe I was an old fool who had fallen down the stairs and still wanted to dance.

On Thursday night, I took my mother’s quilt out of the box and put it back on the couch. Maudie picked me up at six. I pressed my sticker on extra hard at the door.

The woman at the front desk took one look at me and picked up her phone. Otto was at our table with my coffee. The band began our song. For three minutes, I forgot every box.

Then the door banged open. Selena walked in with her coat still on.

“Mom, get your purse. We’re going.”

The accordion stopped. Everybody turned.

“She fell twice this year,” Selena told the room. “She shouldn’t be out.”

“I fell once,” I said. “I counted.”

Then she looked at Otto. “You walked out on her once. Haven’t you done enough?”

Otto’s expression changed. Maudie leaned close to me.

“Es, let’s just go,” she whispered. “You make a scene in here, and that’s all this town will ever say about you.”

She was right. I know this town. For forty-one years, I had been the quiet one behind the glass. But my feet would not take me toward the door.

“Otto,” I said, and my voice broke. “Why did you leave me?”

He looked first at Selena, then at me.

“Leave you?” he said. “Es, I thought you knew.”

He took out his brown wallet and slipped off the rubber band. Behind his late wife’s picture was a letter, folded in four and soft as an old hankie.

“Mom, don’t you read that,” Selena said.

I unfolded it beneath the light by the coffee urn. I knew the handwriting. It was Selena’s, with the same loopy S as the one on every Mother’s Day card I had ever received.

The letter was dated October of 2004. Its first line read: “Mr. Dunaway, my mother asked me to write you, because she saw your proposal as a kind offer, but she does not want to marry you.”

I read it twice. The letter went on to say I did not want him to come to the bank or contact me again. It was signed with my name.

I had never asked Selena to write it. I had never told her to reject Otto. I had asked him to wait until Christmas.

“Selena,” I said. “Did you write this?”

She looked at the letter. “I was trying to help.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“I wrote it.”

Otto had not stepped away from the table. He looked at her, his jaw tight. “You told me she asked you.”

“I said she asked me to write.”

“No,” I said. “You wrote that I didn’t want to marry him.”

Selena shook her head. “You were upset. You didn’t know what you wanted.”

“I knew I wanted time.”

“You said that to him?”

“I did.”

She glanced at the people watching us. “You were still grieving Dad. I thought Otto was pushing you.”

“He asked me to marry him. I asked for time.”

“And then he sold the farm and left,” she said, as if that settled it.

Otto spoke quietly. “I got this letter. I thought you’d changed your mind and couldn’t say it to my face.”

“Why didn’t you ask me?”

“I thought you’d answered.”

Selena started to say something, stopped, and looked down at the letter. “I thought he wanted what Dad left you.”

There it was. Not a misunderstanding about whether I had asked for time. She had decided what Otto wanted, then answered for me.

“You were twenty-six,” I said. “You worked down the hall from me. You could have asked.”

“I thought I was protecting you.”

“From a question I hadn’t answered yet?”

She pressed her lips together. “You were going to marry him.”

“I had not said that.”

“After he left, you were hurt.”

“Yes,” I said. “Because I thought he had gone.”

Otto lowered his eyes. “I believed the letter.”

Selena turned toward him. “You could have waited.”

“I had already waited,” he said. “I thought she had made her choice.”

Maudie stood beside me, still holding my elbow. No one in the room filled the pause. Selena looked at the letter again, then at the sticker on my cardigan.

“You’re making me out to be some kind of monster,” she said.

“I’m telling you what happened.”

“You want me to say I was wrong in front of everyone?”

“You came in here and told everyone I fell twice. I fell once.”

She took a breath. “I was scared after the stairs.”

“I understand being scared. I don’t understand you choosing a nursing home and asking me to sign away my house without asking what I wanted.”

“I thought you needed help.”

“Then ask me what kind.”

She did not answer that. She kept looking at the letter. Otto held it out to me, and I took it. My name at the bottom looked like mine from a distance. Up close, it was not.

“Did you believe I wanted you gone?” I asked him.

“I thought you were embarrassed to tell me yourself.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I know that now.”

Selena’s voice got smaller, but she did not take back what she had said. “I didn’t want you getting hurt.”

“You made the choice for me,” I said. “And then you did it again with the house.”

“I haven’t taken your house.”

“You put the paper in front of me and told me to sign before I went into a nursing home.”

“I was trying to make sure it stayed in the family.”

“It is in the family. It’s mine.”

Otto moved his chair back, as if he meant to give us room. I wanted him to stay.

“Don’t go,” I said.

He sat down again.

Selena looked around the room. “Can we not do this here?”

“You chose here,” I said. “You came in and told everybody I shouldn’t be out.”

“I’m your daughter.”

“I know who you are.”

The words sounded harsher than I meant them to. I was not sorry I had said them.

She looked at me for a long moment. “So you’re going to keep seeing him?”

“I’m going to decide that for myself.”

“And the nursing home?”

“I’m not moving there.”

“You can’t just, ”

“I can. It’s my house, Selena. I’m not signing it over.”

She held her coat closed. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“I believe you thought that. It still wasn’t your decision.”

Otto did not tell her to leave. Neither did Maudie. I did not ask the room to choose between us. Selena looked at the folded letter in my hand, then at me.

“I’m not signing the paper,” I said. “And I’m going home when I’m ready.”

She stood there another moment. Then she turned and walked out. The accordion player waited until the door shut before lifting his instrument again.

Otto and I stayed at the table after the song ended. He rubbed one thumb over the edge of his wallet.

“I should have come to ask you,” he said.

“I should have called after you left.”

“I believed what she wrote.”

“So did I, in a way,” I said. “I believed you’d decided I wasn’t worth waiting for.”

He looked at me. “I didn’t know you wanted me to.”

“I told you I did.”

“You told me to wait until Christmas.”

“I thought that meant wait.”

He let out a breath that could almost have been a laugh. Neither of us had an easy answer for the years between then and now.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Me too.”

The band started another song. Otto asked if I wanted to dance. I said yes.

The next day, the boxes were still in my kitchen. I called Selena and told her I would not sign the paper and would not move to the nursing home. She said she had heard me. I told her that was all I needed her to hear that day.

Then I unpacked the kitchen boxes. The quilt went back on the couch. I kept the letter. Otto and I kept going to the dances, and I stopped letting anyone answer for me.