The first call came while Celia was trying to fasten Nell’s coat. The second came while she was listening to the first.
“It was on my sheet,” the school secretary said. “Eleven. We’ve got the children ready.”
On December 16, the bus was not at the school. It was parked outside the community center, where Margaret had arranged a holiday collection at the same hour. The driver had followed the updated sheet Margaret had given him. Nobody had told the school its stop had moved, because nobody had meant to move it.
Celia looked at the half-fastened coat, the baby’s patient confusion already turning to protest, and felt the old answer arrive complete. She would take a crate in her car. She could get there in twenty minutes. Nell could stay in the carrier. She would make it work.
“Let me call Imogen,” she said instead.
The secretary sighed. “What do I tell the children?”
“That we made a mistake. I’ll call you back in ten minutes with what we can actually do.”
She ended the call feeling as though she had personally removed a book from every child’s hands. Nell began to cry. Celia unfastened the coat and lifted her, resting her against her shoulder while she called Imogen.
“I’m going,” Imogen said.
“You can’t take the bus from the center. They’ve got families waiting.”
“I’m not. I’m taking the reserved bags. The driver can finish where he is. We’ll arrange another school visit before term ends.”
“I could—”
“Celia.”
She closed her mouth.
“Can you call the secretary back?” Imogen asked. “Tell her I can bring the bags at twelve. And that the winter timetable won’t be changed by anybody with a felt-tip pen and a good intention.”
“I don’t think that last part is for the secretary.”
“You’re right. Keep it for me.”
Celia did. She made the call, stayed while the secretary expressed her displeasure, and apologized without promising an impossible afternoon. Then she sat down and let Nell finish being furious in her arms.
By one, she was at the community center anyway, but for the visit she had planned, not the rescue she had nearly invented. The bus stood beneath a bare maple. A little queue waited beside the ramp. Inside, Margaret was putting returned books in the wrong crate with the extreme concentration of someone trying not to cry.
“I’ll take those,” Celia said.
“I know where they go.”
“That one’s going to the school.”
Margaret looked down. “Oh.”
Her cheeks were flushed. Celia set Nell’s stroller beside the bench and helped clear the small pile before speaking again.
“What happened?”
“I thought I’d moved the collection earlier, not the school later. I wrote it on my copy, and then Nora called, and I had to give the driver something.” She put a hand over her eyes. “It sounds idiotic when I say it.”
“It sounds like too many things.”
“They were all small.”
Celia looked at her. Margaret lowered her hand. For a moment neither of them spoke.
“I did the same thing with that extra stop,” Celia said. “It was only another afternoon. Except we don’t have another driver, and people have jobs, and I’m not secretly three people.”
Margaret gave a reluctant smile. “You hide it well.”
“No, I just make everyone else tired.”
Outside, a child rang the little bell by the door. Margaret flinched, then turned with the automatic brightness Celia knew so well.
“Come aboard!”
The child came up the ramp holding a book so tightly its cover bowed. His mother asked whether the school visit had been canceled for good. Margaret began, “No, of course we can—”
Then she stopped.
“Imogen is arranging it,” she said. “We got the times wrong today. I’m sorry.”
The mother’s face softened a little. “Things happen.”
“Yes,” Margaret said, rather faintly. “They do.”
Later, when the queue had gone, she took a folded paper from her coat pocket. It was a brochure for a short trip to see winter gardens farther south. A friend’s name was written at the top in pencil.
“I was going to say no,” she said. “Four days away seems ridiculous when there’s so much to finish.”
“Go.”
“You haven’t looked at the price.”
“Do you need me to?”
Margaret laughed. “No.”
“Then go.”
She refolded the brochure. Her fingers paused at the crease. “I keep thinking if I fill the days properly, I won’t have that moment after supper.”
Celia stayed still. She had heard Margaret speak of Peter, of things he had said and the meals he had liked, but seldom of the shape his absence made now.
“I used to tell him what had happened,” Margaret said. “Even when he was in the next room for half of it.”
“I think he’d have liked the bus.”
“He’d have been unbearable about the parking.” Margaret smiled down at the brochure. “I’ve asked Nora to take the volunteer schedule. Imogen said yes very quickly. She could have hesitated a little for form’s sake.”
Celia laughed, and Margaret tucked the brochure away. When the driver called that he was ready, she picked up her own bag and left the clipboard on its hook.
Ruth phoned while Celia was on her way home.
“I’m on the shortlist.”
Celia pulled into a parking space before answering properly. “The planting bid?”
“No, competitive ice dancing. Yes, the bid.”
“Ruth!”
“Don’t start shrieking. It’s not the contract. They want to speak to three of us.”
“I’m still allowed to shriek.”
“Quietly. I’m in the wholesaler’s parking lot.”
Celia turned to look at Nell, asleep in the back. “Your aunt’s going to be unbearable,” she told her.
“I heard that.”
“Where are you after this?”
“Shop. Why?”
“I’m coming over.”
She bought two small cakes at the bakery and took them to Ruth’s workroom. The space smelled of damp leaves and ribbon. Her sister stood at the high table stripping lower leaves from stems, her hair escaping its clip. Celia put down the bag, unfastened Nell from the carrier and handed Ruth a cake in its paper case.
“I can’t eat that with these hands.”
“I’ll hold it.”
“You will not feed me like a Victorian invalid.”
“Then wash.”
Ruth washed. They ate standing beside the table while Nell regarded a length of ribbon from a safe distance and Celia described the bus mix-up. Ruth listened without offering to take over anything, which Celia found restful in a way she would not have understood six months ago.
“Are you nervous?” she asked her sister.
“Of course I’m nervous. I hate being interviewed. I either talk for ten minutes or say yes and frighten them.”
“You can practice on me.”
“You think everything I do is marvelous.”
“I once told you your Christmas wreath looked like a traffic accident.”
“You were twelve.”
“And right.”
Ruth laughed, then set her cake down. “I might ask you to. Practice, I mean.”
“Tell me when.”
“Tomorrow. After six. Half an hour?”
“Yes.”
It was such a small exchange. Celia had spent months receiving shelter, meals, somebody to hold Nell while she showered. Here was a thing Ruth wanted from her that was neither money nor guilt. She wrote the time in her phone, then put it away and finished the cake.
As she left, Ruth called, “Don’t bring Adrian. He’ll ask about growth potential and I’ll throw something.”
“I’ll ask him to sit outside looking wealthy.”
“That might work.”
Celia was still smiling when she reached the car.
At Adrian’s house that evening, the argument was about a chair.
It sat in the smaller room overlooking the garden, brown, low and enormous, with arms wide enough to support a dinner plate. Celia had seen it before without considering its implications. Now she stood in the doorway while Adrian described how the room could become a place for Nell, and the chair occupied approximately half her imagination.
“That would have to go,” she said.
He looked appalled. “Why?”
“Because a baby needs more than fourteen inches of floor.”
“It could go in our room.”
Our room. She tried not to let the pleasure of the pronoun weaken her position.
“It would follow us?”
“It’s a very good chair.”
“It’s a very large chair.”
“It reclines.”
“I feared as much.”
He sat in it to demonstrate. Something clicked beneath the upholstery and his feet rose. Nell, in Celia’s arms, watched with intense interest.
“Don’t encourage him,” Celia told her.
“She recognizes quality.”
“She ate a washcloth yesterday.”
Adrian held out his hands. Celia passed him the baby, then sat on the broad arm despite herself. It was disgustingly comfortable. His free hand settled against her hip.
“I could move the desk downstairs,” he said. “The chair could go there.”
“Then where would you work?”
“At the desk.”
“With a baby two rooms away?”
He considered. She could feel him wanting to make all the answers ready. Instead he looked around the room as though seeing it occupied for the first time.
“I’d need somewhere I can shut the door.”
“Yes.”
“And you need somewhere your books aren’t treated as decorative objects.”
“An entire wall, at least.”
“I was going to say the garage.”
“I also have a table,” she said. “The little one from my apartment.”
Adrian looked at her. “The unstable one?”
“It’s only unstable on that floor.”
“It looks as if it might throw visitors off.”
“That was an early warning.”
He smiled, then saw that she was waiting for a real answer. Celia had not expected to care about the table. It was cheap, the finish marked in two places before she’d even bought it. She had chosen it after moving into the apartment, carried its disassembled pieces upstairs herself and put it together on an evening when everything she owned still smelled faintly of somebody else’s house.
“Where would you want it?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
He looked around the room again, this time seeking somewhere for a table rather than a baby. She saw him resist suggesting three better tables he could buy.
“Downstairs, by the kitchen window?”
“There’s already a table there.”
“It’s too big for that corner. I’ve never liked it.”
“You don’t have to pretend.”
“I’m not. It came with the house.” He paused. “You think I chose everything here?”
“I suppose I did.”
He shook his head, looking around with an expression she could not quite read. She realized he had let himself live for years among things nobody had asked him whether he liked. His ease had its own peculiar kind of neglect.
“Bring the table,” he said. “We’ll put it by the window. If it tries to kill me again, I’ll mend the leg.”
She touched his cheek. “You’re very accommodating about my furniture.”
“I’m hoping you’ll remember that when you judge mine.”
She pinched his shoulder. He laughed and caught her hand, holding it against his chest. Nell objected to being left out of the movement, and Celia stroked her small back.
The room grew quiet. Outside, a security light came on over the garden path. She could imagine living here. Not just the handsome rooms and the view, but the inconvenience of carrying laundry downstairs, the places her shoes would collect, the way Adrian would spread his papers over a table and then pretend he needed all of them.
“I’d like to keep working,” she said.
“I know.”
“And paying for things. My things.”
“I know that too.” His thumb moved over her knuckles. “You’ll have to tell me when I forget.”
“I’d rather you remembered.”
He looked up at her, then nodded. “Fair.”
It might have become a solemn conversation. Instead the chair made a grinding noise and lurched forward, startling all three of them. Adrian caught Nell securely against him while Celia nearly slid into his lap.
“Wonderful investment,” she said.
“That has never happened before.”
“It knows.”
He looked helplessly from her to the mechanism. “I may need you to stand up.”
She stayed exactly where she was for another second, leaning down to kiss him. His mouth warmed beneath hers. She felt his arm tighten around her waist, felt the house and its many unanswered questions recede to a manageable distance.
“Now I’ll stand up,” she said.
When he finally escaped, they took Nell downstairs and made tea. Celia set her bag beside the stairs without keeping her coat on top of it. At the kitchen table they drew a rough plan of the rooms, crossed out two ideas and disagreed about the third. She wrote BOOKS across a whole wall, and he added a small square in the study for the chair.
She let him have the square.