21 November 2026
“Will he be here when I wake up?” Willa asked.
“Yes.”
“Even if I wake up early?”
“Yes.”
Her daughter pressed the last piece of orange onto the end of her finger. Maren had explained that Simon was having supper with them, then staying in her room. She had supplied it as a fact about Saturday, between the time of their library visit and the question of what to eat. Willa had nodded and gone back to her orange.
Now the questions were arriving with the pips.
“Is he bringing breakfast?”
“We have breakfast.”
“But the good kind.”
“We have the good kind.”
Willa looked toward the cereal cupboard with obvious doubt.
“He might want tea,” she said.
“We have tea too.”
“The kettle is loud.”
“I know. It always has been.”
“If it wakes me up, can I come in?”
“You knock, like you usually do. We’ll hear you.”
“All right.”
She went to fetch the library books. Maren stayed at the table a moment, rolling a pip beneath her fingertip. Her daughter had asked nothing about love, permanence or the treacherous exposure of the heart. She was concerned about breakfast and access to her mother. Maren could manage those questions, provided she didn’t answer twelve that had not been asked.
She made the bed with the ordinary sheets. The good ones were striped and still in the laundry, and for a minute she considered fetching them downstairs and paying for a wash just to have them clean. Then she looked at the pale square on the pillow where Willa had once drawn a sleeping rabbit with a washable marker and spread the duvet over it.
She was not going to disguise the room. She was, however, going to remove the screwdriver from her bedside drawer before anybody reached for a tissue.
Simon arrived with a bag large enough to contain a second, smaller guest.
“Are you moving here?” Willa asked.
“No.” He looked down at the bag. “I appear to have misjudged the scale.”
“What is in it?”
“Some clothes. A book.”
“A really big book?”
Maren took his coat before he could make an excuse. He smelled of cold air and the soap she knew from his country house, and merely hanging the coat beside hers sent an anticipatory warmth up her arms.
“Did you bring six pillows?” she asked.
“One emergency pillow.”
He wasn’t joking. The pillow emerged from the bag, neatly packed in a thin cotton case. Maren stared at it, then at him. Willa began to laugh.
“It has its own bag.”
“So I see.”
“It doesn’t care for public transport,” Simon said.
“You came in a car.”
“The principle remains.”
Willa carried the pillow ceremoniously to Maren’s room. Simon watched her go with an expression that made Maren want to take his face in both hands. Instead she kissed him quickly, because the kitchen smelled of onions and something needed stirring.
Supper was a pan of chicken and potatoes she had made often enough to get right while distracted. Simon offered to help, and she gave him the cucumber rather than inventing something useful. He cut it in such thick pieces that Willa requested a knife to make hers smaller.
“Hereditary fussiness,” Maren said.
“Mine’s architectural,” he said. “These are load-bearing slices.”
Willa ignored him. She had a library book open beside her plate and was attempting to eat a potato without touching the page. Maren reminded her about grease. Simon asked what she was reading, received a summary involving a dragon who didn’t breathe fire and made the mistake of suggesting the dragon might have a cold.
“No. That’s not it.”
“Right.”
“It’s not funny.”
“I see that.”
Maren kept eating. She could hear the small gap waiting to be filled with a smoother answer, a better adult performance. Simon took another piece of cucumber and asked where the dragon lived. Willa showed him the picture. The conversation started again, less sparkling and more successful.
After supper they played a card game that took almost as long to explain as to play. Willa won the first round, claimed the second while still holding two cards and objected to Simon noticing. Maren upheld the rule. Willa folded her arms, then came back when Simon began losing to a mistake of his own.
He did not let her win. He looked genuinely dismayed when he lost, and Willa’s pleasure in this was loud enough that the neighbor knocked lightly on the wall.
“Sorry,” Maren called, then burst out laughing because Simon had put a finger to his lips and immediately dropped his remaining cards across the floor.
At bedtime Willa wanted the whole book, including the chapter they had already read at breakfast. Maren sat beside her and read it. Simon stayed in the kitchen. There were sounds of water, then the scrape of a chair. Maren reached the dragon’s first effort at breathing smoke, corrected two mispronunciations at her daughter’s request and kissed the warm place below her hairline.
“Night.”
“Don’t do the kettle.”
“Not tonight.”
“Night.”
She left the door open the usual hand’s width. From the kitchen came a single low whistle, stopped before it formed a tune.
Simon had washed the pan and left the roasting tray to soak. Two small glasses waited beside an unopened bottle of wine.
“You can say no,” he said. “I brought it because I like it, not because your kitchen required improvement.”
She took the bottle, read the label she didn’t understand and gave it back.
“Open it.”
He did. She watched the movement of his hands, the concentration he gave to an ordinary cork. At the country house she had had a whole beautiful room in which to be aware of wanting him. Here the awareness filled the space between the refrigerator and the chair. It made everything seem closer.
They took the glasses to the sofa, which sagged toward the middle. Simon sat too far out and nearly spilled his wine when the cushion shifted. Maren steadied the glass, laughing against his shoulder.
“You’re laughing at my accommodations.”
“I’m laughing at you.”
“That’s more familiar.”
She set her wine on the low table, turned and kissed him. He put his own glass down immediately, one hand going into her hair. No hesitation this time, no consideration of what his position beside her might mean to anybody else. His mouth moved on hers, and she drew one knee onto the sofa to come closer.
He broke the kiss just far enough to look at her.
“I’ve been thinking about that since you took my coat.”
“I thought you were thinking about the cucumber.”
“Desperately trying to.”
She laughed against his mouth, and he kissed the laugh away. His hand settled at her waist, then moved slowly along her back. Maren let herself rest against him. The sofa was too short for comfort, her sock had begun to slip off and her daughter was asleep less than twenty feet away. None of these facts reduced the force of wanting. They made it new.
They talked softly for a while, their bodies still touching. He told her about a disastrous early delivery of toys that had arrived at a buyer’s office without boxes. She described her first paid display, for which she had accidentally made all the pastry too large for the miniature counter. He asked what she had done.
“Cut everything in half and called it a tasting menu.”
“I would have bought it.”
“You would have asked where the other halves were.”
“Also true.”
His fingertips moved over the inside of her wrist. The touch was almost absent-minded. She stopped listening to her own next sentence.
“Maren?”
She looked at him.
“Have I lost you?”
She took the wineglass out of his hand. “Not in the way you think.”
She stood, bringing him with her. At Willa’s door she paused to listen. The child’s breathing was even, the book facedown on her blanket. Maren moved it to the floor, left the door at its usual angle and returned to Simon.
In her room his enormous bag blocked half the space beside the bed. He moved it, hit the wardrobe with it and swore in a whisper. She started laughing so hard she had to sit down.
“This is going very well,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
She held out her hand. He took it. She drew him between her knees and kissed him until his free hand settled warmly against her cheek.
“Very sure.”
He closed the door.
Maren woke with Simon’s arm across her waist and somebody whispering furiously in the hall.
“Mum. Mum. The milk.”
She lifted her head. Her clock said six seventeen. The room was gray, Simon’s hair was in her mouth and the emergency pillow had somehow ended up on the floor.
“What about the milk?” she called softly.
“The lid is stuck.”
“I’ll be out.”
Simon made a sound that might have been English if either of them had been more awake. She eased out from beneath his arm, found her dressing gown on his bag and opened the door.
Willa stood with the carton held against her chest. Her hair was flattened on one side. She looked past Maren into the room, curious rather than upset, then held the milk higher.
“I tried.”
“I can see.”
Maren took it to the kitchen, twisted the lid and poured cereal. Willa climbed into her usual chair. After a minute Simon appeared, barefoot, his sleep shirt creased at the shoulder. He paused in the doorway as though the room had rearranged itself overnight.
“Morning.”
Willa nodded, chewing.
“Tea?” Maren asked.
“I can do it.”
“The mugs are above the—”
He opened the wrong cupboard. A stack of plastic containers slid forward, one lid landing on his foot. Willa laughed once, sharply, then remembered something and frowned.
“The kettle is loud.”
“I’ll be quick.”
“That makes it louder.”
Maren took her coffee from the jar and let him find the mugs. He filled the kettle with considerably less water than she usually did. It still boiled with its familiar rattle. Willa stared at it as if personally betrayed.
Simon pulled out the chair beside Maren.
“That’s my chair,” Willa said.
“You’re sitting in yours.”
“That’s my other one.”
He looked at Maren. She felt the appeal and the temptation to take over before a single uncomfortable second could happen.
“Willa, you can use one chair at a time.”
“But I sit there when you have coffee.”
“I know. This morning Simon’s sitting there.”
Her daughter’s mouth tightened. Simon remained standing, fingers on the chair back. The whole room seemed to balance on whether he sat down.
“Could I have the stool?” he asked.
“You’ll get a numb bottom,” Maren said.
“I can live with that.”
He fetched it from the workbench and sat at the end of the table. Willa moved into the newly vacant chair beside Maren, but she didn’t look triumphant. She leaned against her mother’s arm for a few seconds, then went back to her cereal.
Maren handed Simon his tea. Their fingers touched. He smiled, small and sleepy. There was no way to tell him everything she felt without making a great deal too much of a chair, so she buttered a piece of toast and put it on his plate.
After breakfast Willa took her sketchbook to the floor. Simon carried his empty mug to the sink and came back for Maren’s. She caught his sleeve.
“Stay there.”
He did. She rose onto her toes and kissed him, unhurriedly, in her kitchen. Over his shoulder Willa made a disgusted sound.
“I’m drawing.”
“We noticed,” Maren said.
“You’re blocking the light.”
Simon stepped sideways, taking Maren with him. She laughed into his shirt, then laid her cheek against the warm place at his throat for one brief, lovely moment before letting go.