10 October 2026
Blake called at nine fifty-eight, while Willa was looking for a sock she had decided was a rabbit.
Maren let the phone ring long enough to close the kitchen door. She had asked for a morning conversation; she had no reason to be surprised that it was happening. Nevertheless, when she answered, her body reacted as if he had arrived at the apartment with a suitcase.
“I’ve told Joanna,” he said.
“All right.”
“She thinks we should meet somewhere Willa likes. If she wants to.”
Maren looked at the closed door. Joanna’s sensible contribution should not have hurt. It was useful. She wrote it down anyway, as though recording it might remove the small sting.
“There’s a park near us. We go most Sundays.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Possibly. I need to talk to her first. A short meeting, with me there.”
“I know.”
He sounded less certain than yesterday. They discussed half an hour, no photographs unless Willa wanted them, no promise of a second meeting before she had experienced the first. Maren nearly told him not to bring anything, then stopped. A present wasn’t inherently a threat. She couldn’t give him a list of instructions and call that letting him begin.
“Don’t surprise her with other people,” she said. “Just you this time.”
“Of course.”
They agreed to talk separately about the larger practical questions during the coming week. He had looked up what he needed to ask and would get proper advice. So would she. He didn’t demand an answer by Sunday, and she didn’t pretend she was granting him all the answers by offering a park bench.
At the end he said, “What does she call me?”
“So far? Her father. Blake, when she asks your name.”
“Not Dad.”
“She hasn’t met you.”
“No.” A pause. “No, of course.”
When the call ended, Maren sat with the phone against her knee. Beyond the door, Willa was giving the rabbit a voice that sounded like a furious old man. She could go in and tell her now. She could do it at lunch, in the quiet of the afternoon. She didn’t want to launch another enormous sentence through a doorway while her daughter was halfway through a game.
She would tell her before bedtime and talk again in the morning. For now she went to find the rabbit’s other sock.
At three, under lights that made every shade of white look slightly ill, Simon held up a roll of silver mesh.
“Snow.”
“Drain filter,” Maren said.
“You haven’t seen what I can do with it.”
“I’ve seen the price. Apparently it can pay for your entire national campaign.”
He looked at the label, turned the roll over and put it back.
“You were meant to stop me before I said anything.”
“I was enjoying the confidence.”
The wholesaler occupied a warehouse-sized space full of materials no sensible adult needed in these quantities. Trees leaned against shelves of artificial birds. Whole sacks of translucent pebbles shone under a sign that said they were unsuitable for aquariums. Maren had bought from the firm by mail but had never visited the sample floor, which opened on Saturdays for trade appointments.
Simon had suggested coming because the new fabrics didn’t photograph accurately. Maren had accepted because this was true and because she wanted to see whether he was still glad to spend an afternoon with her. She wasn’t proud of the second reason, but it had brought her here in a sweater she liked, with her usual sitter paid to stay through early supper.
He had greeted her without careful concern. No lowered voice, no inquiry about how the confession had gone before they were properly inside. He had simply offered her the trolley and asked whether she was as hungry as he was.
She had nearly kissed him for that. The thought was excessive enough to make her steer directly into a bin of plastic holly.
Now he examined a knitted sample the color of mustard.
“This is awful,” he said.
“I like that.”
“You can’t.”
“I do. It looks warm.”
“It looks like the inside of a train seat.”
“You’ve been traveling on better trains than I have.”
“You brought me here to educate my taste.”
“I brought you here to carry things.”
His grin widened. He took the basket from her without protesting. She enjoyed that more than she should: the plain physical pleasure of having her hands free while he followed her down an aisle.
They needed three textures to soften the town without making it look stuffed with cotton wool. Simon liked a feathery white paper that fell apart when Maren pulled it gently. She liked a rough felt that he thought looked like porridge. They compromised on none of it. They took small samples of both and kept looking.
At the artificial birds, he stopped.
“There,” he said. “That’s your expression when somebody says ‘magical.’”
The bird was a swan with a crooked neck and an astonishingly hostile eye.
“That is not my expression.”
“It’s very close.”
She picked up a smaller swan and put it beside his. Its beak had been glued on at a disagreeable angle.
“You, when the tower wouldn’t come off.”
He laughed, full and unembarrassed. They were alone in the aisle, surrounded by miniature birds manufactured for some business purpose she couldn’t imagine, and she wanted the afternoon to keep going.
“It wasn’t my finest moment.”
“I liked it.”
His gaze met hers.
“Did you?”
She meant the laugh. She meant seeing him caught out and able to be amused. She also meant the man beneath the expensive shirt, and neither of them seemed interested in pretending she didn’t.
“You recovered well,” she said.
“Ah. An assessment.”
“I’m a professional.”
“So you’ve mentioned.”
He put the swan back, very carefully, and they resumed shopping.
At the cutting table Maren unfolded a fabric flecked with gold. It was more expensive than she’d planned but right under the light, a warmth that would show from the pavement without glittering over everything else. She calculated the allowance in her head. Enough, if she reduced another item. Simon watched her face.
“That one?” he asked.
“I’m deciding.”
“You can put it on our account.”
“I know. There’s still a budget.”
“I wasn’t trying to—”
He stopped. She looked at him, then at the fabric. She had heard a patronizing offer that he hadn’t made. The right material didn’t become wrong because he could afford it without calculating.
“I’m trying to work out how much I need. Hold that end?”
He held it. They opened the fabric between them, and a soft gold light traveled over the folds.
“Yes,” she said. “That one.”
They bought the sample and nothing for the whole installation. Before leaving, Simon disappeared down the bird aisle and returned with his hands behind his back.
“You haven’t.”
“It’s a business expense.”
“You cannot put a hostile swan in my window.”
“Our window.”
Something in her must have sharpened. He saw it and lifted one hand.
“Your design,” he said. “Our appalling waterfowl.”
He revealed both swans. She started laughing and couldn’t stop. The checkout assistant watched them without enthusiasm while Simon paid for the birds himself.
Outside, the afternoon had gone clear and blue. A car waited for him. Its driver opened the boot for their bags while Maren looked down the street at a narrow restaurant with steamed-up windows.
Simon checked his watch, then put it away.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Home, eventually.”
“Before eventually. Have you eaten?”
“An extremely unsatisfactory biscuit.”
She pointed to the restaurant. “Do you like dumplings?”
“Very much.”
“Then have dumplings with me.”
He looked at her with an expression she had no useful work label for.
“I’d like that,” he said.
They sat at a small table by the window. Simon’s knee touched hers when he sat down; he moved it back, then looked mildly annoyed by the size of the table. Maren placed her bag beside her chair and chose not to move her own leg farther away.
She ordered the dumplings she knew and one she didn’t. He asked her advice and then chose differently, which she liked. Outside, the driver took the car elsewhere after Simon sent him a message. Nobody came to their table except the woman taking their order.
“Do you always drive around with a car waiting?” Maren asked.
“No. Sometimes I make poor decisions about parking on my own.”
“You have to admit this is convenient.”
“It’s extraordinarily convenient.” He smiled. “You’re allowed to enjoy it.”
She tore open her chopstick wrapper. “I did. On Thursday. I nearly fell asleep.”
“I’ve done that.”
“Did you miss your stop?”
“The driver had a key. Less of an adventure than yours would have been.”
She shook her head, smiling. He didn’t pretend their lives were the same. It made it easier to ask the next thing.
“Was it always like this?”
He followed her glance toward the street.
“Not remotely. My first workshop was a garage I rented from a man who stored a boat in it. I could have half the floor except when he wanted to varnish something.”
“You worked around a boat?”
“Very carefully. He had strong opinions about dust.”
“What were you making?”
“Very complicated wooden automata for adults who liked to own complicated wooden automata. Mostly tiny people undertaking activities nobody ought to attempt with a crank handle.”
She laughed. “Such as?”
“One was a man trying to propose while a dog stole his hat. The timing took six weeks. I charged enough to pay for three.”
“I would have liked that.”
“So would five other people. Unfortunately, those were all the customers.”
The food arrived in a cloud of steam. He lifted a dumpling too soon, burned his fingers and dropped it back onto the plate.
“Impressive hand coordination,” she said.
“I use tools professionally.”
He told her about the first small toy that had sold well, a set of linked wooden rooms designed to open in sequence. At a friend’s house, a child had pulled the rooms apart and made a tower. Simon had spent the first ten minutes showing her how to restore the proper order.
“And then?”
“Then her mother told me, kindly, that I could either have a cup of tea or be asked to leave.”
Maren laughed into her napkin.
“I had tea. She made a much better tower. I changed the connections in the next version.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“It was embarrassing. That’s different.”
She liked that answer. He dipped a dumpling into the sauce, took a cautious bite and closed his eyes briefly in pleasure. The simple appetite of it went straight through her.
She wanted to know what he looked like in the morning, not in a glossy photograph. She wanted the sound of his laugh in a room that wasn’t a shop. She had spent so long keeping wanting to a manageable size that its current lack of discipline felt almost indecent.
“How did you start?” he asked.
She could have told him the short professional version. Instead she told him about being a little girl visiting her grandparents, making shops out of shoe boxes and insisting on rearranging the furniture every time someone took the lid off. Her grandfather had made paper coins; her grandmother had refused to shop anywhere that didn’t stock real biscuits.
“Excellent standards,” Simon said.
“They spoiled the business model.”
“Family investors often do.”
They ate and talked about things that didn’t require repair. A terrible sofa he’d once bought because he liked its color. The first apartment she had painted without permission, using a shade of green that became unbearable at night. He confessed he could not draw a convincing horse. She challenged him to prove it on the back of the receipt.
The result looked like a table expressing alarm.
“I see the difficulty,” she said.
“You do it, then.”
She took the pen. Her horse had an excellent body and no plausible legs. He turned the receipt upside down, improving it marginally.
By the time she checked her phone, she had ten minutes before she needed to leave. She said so, and he asked whether she wanted the car. This time she said yes immediately.
At the door, while they waited, he finally asked, “Yesterday. Was it very hard?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“He knows. We’re speaking about a first meeting, if Willa wants one.”
“All right.”
She looked at him. “Thank you for not asking that at the cutting table.”
“I was busy defending my swan.”
She laughed, and this time the laugh didn’t feel like it had to climb over anything.
When the car arrived, he opened the boot, took out his bag and handed her the smaller swan from hers.
“For your professional reference.”
“It’s dreadful.”
“I know.”
Their fingers touched around the ridiculous bird. Neither moved for a beat. Then she took it, warm where his hand had been.
“Thank you for supper,” he said.
“You paid half.”
“I meant for asking.”
She got into the car with the swan in her lap, smiling before the door had closed.