Lucy asked for the second call on Saturday evening, after she came home from the game shop with Paul carrying a small box of cards neither of them quite understood. Their first Saturday plan had remained tentative around Paul’s shifts, and work had made him postpone the confirmed Sunday visit in May. This time he kept the new pickup time. Lucy put the box on the kitchen table and said, “I think I want to talk to Ryan tomorrow. I read his apology about the photo again.”
Ryan had written four days after the first call. He had not defended his search as harmless because the picture was public. He had said Lucy told him what she wanted, he looked anyway, and he would not search for or share another photograph. He had also answered her question about Milo’s theory of where water slept. Lucy had let the message sit for a week before she replied that she had read it.
“Tomorrow before your nap?” Nora asked. Her Sunday shift would begin at ten.
“Eleven. I want to make the call and still have the afternoon.”
“I’ll ask whether he’s free.”
Lucy opened the game box while Nora sent the email. Inside were cards showing inventions that should never have been built: a chair with one leg, a bicycle with square wheels, a spoon with holes all along its bowl. Paul had remembered Lucy’s pleasure in rules she could argue with. She told Nora he had been awkward at first, but he had let her choose the shop and not mentioned dinner with all three of them again. They had disagreed about whether a square wheel could roll downhill. Lucy had won the argument by drawing a diagram on the receipt.
“It would bounce,” Nora said, looking at the picture.
“That’s movement. It’s not rolling.”
“I am not taking Paul’s side.”
“You did for a second.” Lucy grinned. “Ryan might know. He fixes things.”
“You can ask him.”
“I might.”
Ryan accepted the eleven o’clock call. On Sunday morning Lucy set the laptop at the kitchen table without rehearsing the camera angle. She wore an old sweatshirt and had the game box beside her. Nora sat on the back step again, door open. She heard Ryan greet Lucy and tell her he had not looked for more pictures. Lucy said, “Okay,” and opened the box.
For the first five minutes they argued about the square-wheeled bicycle. Ryan insisted it could move over a track built to match the wheel’s edges; Lucy said that changed the ground rather than proving the wheel useful. He admitted she had a point. He was less polished than in his letter and less eager to fill every pause than on the first call. Nora could hear him ask what the rules of the game were, then laugh when Lucy said neither she nor Paul knew.
“What do I call you if we meet?” Lucy asked suddenly.
“Ryan is fine.”
“Some adults get upset if a kid uses their first name.”
“I don’t. I don’t know what else you would call me right now.” He hesitated. “I won’t put a title on you that you haven’t chosen either.”
“You called me Lucy in your letter.”
“That’s your name, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I meant it sounded like you were writing to me, not a kid you invented.” Lucy turned a card between her fingers. “When you saw the school picture, what did you think?”
Ryan took a moment. “First I thought you looked serious. Then I saw you were listening to another student, not posing. It reminded me that I had no idea what you sounded like. I didn’t have the right to go looking after you said no.”
“I was listening because she had a source I wanted.”
“That sounds more interesting than my first thought.”
“It was. She let me copy it afterward.” Lucy set the card down. “You haven’t looked for another one?”
“No. I wanted to. I didn’t.” He did not ask for praise. “Tessa asked why I kept checking my phone. I told her there was somebody I hoped to hear from, and I wasn’t going to say more until I’d asked you.”
“Does she know about me now?”
“No. I won’t tell her today. If we meet, you can decide whether she’s someone you’d want to know later.”
Lucy nodded. She seemed relieved that there would not be an unseen aunt already celebrating her existence.
At eleven ten, Lucy closed the box. “I have something else to ask before I talk about meeting,” she said. “When you left for treatment, did you think you’d see Mom again?”
Nora gripped the edge of the back-step railing. It was a question she’d never thought to ask Ryan herself.
“At first I did,” he said. “I thought if I finished the program, I could come back and she’d be glad I had done it. I didn’t understand that she’d spent months living with what I did before I left. After I used again, I assumed she was better off without me and stopped trying to find out.”
“Did you ever write?”
“I started two letters. I didn’t send them. I wanted them to say I had changed, and I couldn’t make that true then.”
“She would’ve known if you’d sent a letter. Maybe she would’ve answered.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t say I tried when I didn’t.” His voice was rough but steady. “Why did you want to know?”
“Because I keep wondering what you knew was missing. You didn’t know me. You knew her.”
“I did. I missed her. I didn’t know what to do with that without asking her to take care of me again.”
Lucy held the game box closed with both hands. “I don’t want to be part of an old conversation between you two.”
“You aren’t. I can answer what you ask without making you carry it.”
She nodded once. “Then I want to ask about meeting. Not today. Next Saturday at the park cafe, maybe. Thirty minutes. Mom can be nearby.” Nora heard it because the back door was open; she stayed where she was.
There was a short silence. “I would like that,” Ryan said. “Could we meet earlier in the week? I’m off Wednesday afternoon.”
“I’m in school Wednesday. Next Saturday is when I want.”
“I could come to your neighborhood after school.”
“I said the park cafe. Saturday.” Lucy’s voice had the calm edge she used in a round when an opponent answered a question she had not asked.
“All right,” Ryan said. “I heard you. I was trying to make it sooner because I’m nervous you’ll change your mind.”
“I might change my mind. That doesn’t get fixed by Wednesday.”
“No. It doesn’t.” He took a breath. “Saturday. Thirty minutes. Your mother nearby. Do you want Tessa there?”
“No. I’d like to meet one new person at a time.”
“Then just me.”
Nora heard Lucy close the game box. She told Ryan which park cafe she meant, the one near the public gardens, but not their home address or school. They agreed on eleven in the morning. Ryan asked whether Nora would email the details so he did not mishear anything. Lucy said she would write them herself from Nora’s address. She ended the call at eleven twenty, not because the timer forced her but because she had said what she meant to say.
When Nora came inside, Lucy was examining one of the invention cards. “He keeps asking for sooner,” she said. “He did stop after I said Saturday twice.”
“Did the call feel better?”
“Most of it. He didn’t pretend the photo never happened. We talked about the stupid bicycle.” She held up the card. “He thinks it could work on a track shaped like stairs. That’s cheating.”
“It may also be engineering.”
“You sound like him now.” Lucy set the card down. “I want you at the cafe, but not at the same table unless I ask.”
“I can sit where you can see me.”
“Good. I might only stay twenty minutes. I might stay thirty. Don’t make me explain to him why.”
“I won’t.” Nora had learned the useful difference between agreeing and reciting an entire list of exits. She asked whether Lucy wanted a sandwich. Lucy said yes, provided Nora did not cut it into small pieces like a nervous parent.
After lunch, Sam texted the time he’d already arranged with Ben: he was helping Ben and June move the last dry boxes from a friend’s spare room back to Ben’s apartment and would be free around four. He had told Nora the plan on Friday, including that they might be delayed if June refused to abandon the friend’s dog. Nora had not asked him to reserve the whole Sunday. She had her own afternoon before her night shift, and she did not want to spend it at home waiting for either man to decide what the day meant.
She napped for an hour, woke at two, and went to the riverside food market. Lucy had a study group with Imani online and preferred the quiet house. The market occupied a paved walk beside the water. A vendor sold flatbreads hot enough to burn the paper sleeve; another offered jars of pickled green beans and argued with customers who said they were too sour. Nora bought a flatbread and ate half of it standing by a railing. She had come without a shopping list, which made the first fifteen minutes oddly difficult. Then she walked past a stall of small prints made from old transit maps and spent another fifteen deciding whether she liked one because of its colors or because the station on it was where she and Sam had missed a connection.
She did not buy the print. She bought a cheap paper fan because the afternoon had turned warm, and sat on a bench to watch the riverboats come in. A little boy at the next bench insisted the ferry was late because it was looking for fish. His father told him ferries did not look for fish. Nora thought of June’s roof of soup and almost sent Sam a photograph of the boat. She put her phone away instead and watched it dock with no fish in sight.
The fan was printed with a fading advertisement for a soda that no longer existed. Nora remembered the drink from high school, though she could not remember whether she had liked it. She went back to the print stall to ask the artist about the station picture. The station had been torn down before Nora was born; the colors were taken from a timetable the artist found at an estate sale. Nora had thought it was the stop where she and Sam had missed the train, but the line belonged to another part of the city. She liked the print less as a souvenir and more as a picture. That was a small relief. Not everything she enjoyed had to document an important afternoon.
The artist showed her a second print, a map made from the negative spaces between roads. Nora was tempted by it but had promised herself she could come to a market without buying proof that she had enjoyed it. She went back to the railing and unfolded the paper fan. The ferry had already left. She could still hear its motor as it went under the bridge.
At three fifty Sam texted: Boxes moved. June has elected to stay with the dog. Ben has her. Where are you? Nora sent him the market entrance and wrote, Come if you want a slow walk. He answered, I do. She finished the flatbread before he arrived. She was hungry again by then and delighted that she had not saved half for a man who could buy his own.
Sam came through the crowd carrying a small paper bag. His face brightened when he saw her, not when he saw the food stalls. He kissed her at the bench and handed her the bag. Inside was the paper crown June had made for him the week before, now folded flat and decorated with three new blue stars.
“She said it needed more sky,” he explained. “I thought you might want to see. You don’t have to keep it.”
“I don’t want to take her crown.” Nora held it carefully. “Tell her the sky is excellent.”
“I’ll take it back. She expects a report.” He slipped it into his pocket. “What did you find here?”
“A boat that may have been looking for fish, a map print I didn’t buy, and a pickled-bean vendor who would insult you for free.”
“I would like to meet him.”
“You’re too polite. He’ll pick you apart.”
They went. Sam tasted a bean and declared it sharp enough to polish a bolt. The vendor said bolts were not on the menu. Nora bought a small jar because the exchange had made her laugh, then regretted it when Sam’s hand at her back made carrying the jar awkward. He offered to put it in his coat pocket. She let him; a pocket was not a grand solution.
At the next stall a woman offered them three kinds of pepper to smell before they chose. Sam, who could identify a failing motor by its hum, could not tell the mild one from the hot one with his eyes closed. Nora could. She guided his wrist toward the jars, watching him try to describe each scent without saying the name. “This one smells like the back of a warm cupboard,” he said of the mild pepper. She laughed hard enough to make the vendor look up.
“That’s not an insult,” Nora told her. “He has a good opinion of cupboards.”
“I have a good opinion of the person who brought me here,” Sam said. He opened his eyes. The look between them made the crowded path feel briefly private. Nora bought the mild pepper. She had no recipe in mind; she wanted to see whether Sam could identify it later when it was part of a meal.
They wandered without aiming for the print stall. Sam told her June had insisted on packing the friend’s dog into one of the dry boxes, then accepted a drawing of the dog instead. Ben was relieved to have their things back in his apartment even with the kitchen still being finished. He had asked Sam for help with the boxes, not a delivery crew, and Sam had spent the morning lifting them. Nora could see the tiredness in his shoulders and liked that he had come to the market anyway.
“Lucy talked to Ryan again,” she said. “She asked for a short public meeting next Saturday.”
“How does she feel?”
“Nervous. She also had an argument about a square-wheeled bicycle with Paul and then with Ryan. I think the bicycle may be winning.”
“A track shaped for the corners might work.”
Nora stopped walking. “Don’t say that to her unless you’re prepared for drawings.”
“I am always prepared for drawings.”
“Not this many.”
They passed a musician playing a tune on a small accordion. The player missed a note and kept going without apology. Sam bought two cups of chilled tea from a stall and held Nora’s while she unfolded her paper fan. She fanned him first. He made a grateful, exaggerated bow, and she pushed his shoulder because the bow blocked the breeze.
At the end of the market walk, a path returned directly to the parking lot. Nora had time to take it, go home, nap again and leave for her shift without hurry. She looked at the other path, which followed the river past three more stalls and curved back. “One more circuit,” she said.
“Are you sure you have time?”
“I checked before I came.” She took his hand. “I want to see whether the map print looks as good the second time.”
They took the longer path. At the print stall Sam asked the artist how she had made the map colors. She showed him the old timetable she’d used, then a sheet of paper with layers of ink worked out in pencil. Sam studied the failed versions with as much interest as the finished print. Nora liked that he asked about the work instead of the price.
“You should get it,” he said when the artist went to help another customer. “You looked at it twice.”
“I liked looking. That isn’t always a request to own the thing.”
“I know. If I like something, I usually want to take it home. I have more cupboards than good sense.”
“You do have a fine opinion of cupboards.”
“You’ve seen the one with my terrible cookbooks. Ben tried to give half of them away when I moved. I made him put back a book where every recipe involves a tinned peach.”
“Have you cooked from it?”
“One recipe. It was dreadful. I keep it because the notes in the margins argue with the author. Somebody spent years making it usable.”
Nora looked at the print again. “I may come back for this next week. I don’t want to decide today.”
Sam did not ask the artist to hold it or take a photograph to buy it later. He followed Nora when she moved on. The tea was cold, the fan was almost useless, and his kiss under the shade of a vendor’s awning lasted long enough that the seller cleared his throat and offered them a jar of honey. Nora laughed against Sam’s mouth and bought the honey because it was the smallest jar on the table. They walked on with too much to carry and no urgent need to set any of it down.