Two days after calling off their wedding, Russell asked if he could take another woman on their honeymoon.
Delia had opened the door with a colander in her hands. She had been rinsing grapes because they were something she could eat standing up, without finding a plate or remembering who had bought it. Water slipped through the holes onto her bare feet.
“The cottage, I mean,” he said.
She looked past him at the empty landing. For a moment she expected the woman to be there, waiting with a suitcase.
Russell held a canvas bag against his chest. He had put on the blue shirt she liked, although perhaps that had nothing to do with her. Perhaps he had simply reached into his wardrobe and taken out a shirt.
“Could I come in?”
“What did you just ask me?”
He glanced toward the other apartment. “It’s paid for. You said they wouldn’t refund it.”
“Yes.”
“And I assumed you wouldn’t want to—”
“Who would go with you?”
His mouth tightened. He knew she knew. She wanted him to say it anyway.
“Sabine.”
A grape fell through the gap between her thumb and the colander’s rim. It landed on the floor and rolled against his shoe. He moved his foot so he wouldn’t crush it. That small, considerate movement made her want to throw the whole bowl down the stairs.
Instead she set it on the narrow table inside the door.
“The booking’s in my name.”
“I know. That’s why I’m asking. I thought we could change it.”
“You mean I could.”
“All right. You could.”
He sounded tired. She had heard that tone on delayed trains, in queues, when someone on the telephone would not understand a simple request. She had spent seven years helping him past things that exhausted his patience.
“No,” she said.
He looked at her, waiting for the rest.
She picked up the grape and put it in the trash can.
“I’d pay you something toward it.”
“How much?”
The question escaped before she could stop it. She didn’t want an offer. She wanted to know whether he had already decided the price.
“I don’t know. We could work it out. There are other expenses to settle.”
“Yes, there are.”
She let him into the apartment because she did not want their neighbors to have this conversation for free. He stayed beside the table, still holding the bag. The living room beyond him was almost tidy. She had swept the invitation envelopes into a drawer yesterday, then reopened it for a stamp and found her own handwriting looking up at her. Since then she had left it shut.
Russell followed her glance.
“I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“Were you planning to tell her it was our honeymoon cottage?”
“She knows the situation.”
“The situation.”
“Delia.”
She hated that too: her name spoken as a request to become easier.
Their wedding was supposed to be tomorrow. At eleven she should have been arriving at a room with tall windows and flowers she had chosen while Russell answered messages from work. Her mother had bought silver shoes. Yasmin had promised to arrive early to help. Forty-three people had been informed that they could now do something else with their Saturday.
Delia had spent Wednesday evening saying there would be no wedding. She had spent Thursday learning that suppliers could be sympathetic and still retain a deposit. This morning she had managed grapes.
Russell put the canvas bag on the table.
“I brought your things.”
Inside were a phone charger, a paperback with a receipt marking her place, and the little yellow colander she kept at his house. She looked from it to the larger one beside the sink. She had forgotten owning two.
He lifted out a small glass jar.
“Your coffee, as well.”
There was barely enough left for a cup.
Something in her face must have changed because he set it down carefully.
“I didn’t want to throw anything away.”
She touched the handle of the yellow colander. She had bought it when the handle on his broke, on a Saturday when they had walked to the store for light bulbs and come back with strawberries. He had carried the bag. She could remember the shape of his hand through the thin plastic, the red fruit pressing against his fingers.
“Was it six weeks?” she asked.
He looked away.
“On Wednesday you said things had been confusing for a while. Was a while six weeks?”
“About that.”
“And it wasn’t just talking.”
“No.”
She breathed through her nose. There it was, without the gentler language he had used two nights ago. She did not ask where. An answer would give her a room to picture, a surface, a particular afternoon on which she had been doing something ordinary and trusting him.
He reached toward her, stopped, and hooked his thumb into his pocket.
“I know how this looks.”
“How did you think it looked?”
“I didn’t set out to hurt you.”
She turned the coffee jar until its label faced the wall.
“You should go.”
“We do need to talk about the costs.”
“We will. Not today.”
“And the cottage?”
For the first time since he arrived, she laughed. It was a brief, ugly sound.
“No, Russell. You can’t have the cottage.”
He took a breath as though there were another reasonable argument available. Then he saw the bag, the two colanders, her wet feet on the wooden floor.
“All right.”
At the door he said he hoped she would call when she felt ready. She nodded because she wanted the door closed more than she wanted to correct him.
When it was, she stood with her palm against the lock.
The apartment made its usual noises. A pipe ticked in the wall. Someone upstairs dragged a chair. Her refrigerator began its long, unreliable hum.
She carried the yellow colander into the kitchen and tried to put it inside the larger one. It didn’t fit. The handles caught, and she pushed harder, then harder again, until both fell into the sink with a crash.
That was when she cried.
She sat on the floor because the nearest chair was six steps away and six steps seemed unreasonable. Her phone rang in her back pocket. She let it stop. A message arrived, and then another call.
On the third she answered.
“If you’re asleep, don’t speak,” Yasmin said. “I can just hang up.”
“I’m on the kitchen floor.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Right. Stay there. Or get up. Whichever. I’m coming.”
“You have school.”
“School has ended. Children have been released into the wild. Twenty minutes.”
Yasmin arrived in seventeen carrying bread, cheese, and a supermarket cake with a reduced-price sticker. She put everything on the counter and crouched beside Delia, her long skirt spreading over the floor.
“What happened?”
Delia told her about the cottage.
Yasmin’s expression changed slowly, as if each part of the request had to reach her separately.
“I could call him.”
“Don’t.”
“I could simply ask what is wrong with him.”
“Don’t call him.”
“All right.” Yasmin sat back on her heels. “Would shouting here help?”
“No.”
“Good. I’m quite tired.”
Delia laughed into the tissue Yasmin offered, and then cried again. Her friend put an arm around her and stayed until the cold from the floor had traveled through both their clothes.
Later, at the table, Yasmin cut the cake into pieces too large for the plates.
“You could post a picture from the cottage,” she said. “Looking incredible. Make him see what he’s lost.”
Delia stared at her.
“What?”
“I don’t want to spend ten days taking pictures for Russell.”
Yasmin set down the knife. “No. You’re right. That was stupid.”
“I don’t know if I want to go at all.”
“Then don’t.”
“But I paid for it.”
“Money’s gone either way.”
“I know that.”
“Sorry.”
They ate in silence for a little while. Yasmin was usually good at finding the next thing that needed doing. Delia loved her for it and, this afternoon, could hardly bear it.
“Can we talk about something else?” she asked.
Yasmin told her about a student who had submitted a clay sculpture still attached to the table on which he had made it. She described the delicate negotiations involved in persuading him that the table could not be entered into the exhibition. Delia listened. At one point she realized she had finished her cake.
Her friend had to leave before six. There were reports to finish, dinner at home, an entire life that had continued through Wednesday.
At the door Yasmin hugged her hard.
“Text me tonight.”
“I will.”
“And eat something that isn’t grapes.”
Delia glanced toward the kitchen.
“How did you know?”
“They’re all over your counter.”
After she left, Delia went into the bedroom. The dark green suitcase lay open on the bed. She had put it there on Tuesday, excited enough to begin packing early. One side held a swimsuit, a book, and three pairs of socks. In the other she had laid a new nightdress with the tag still attached.
She took the nightdress out.
Then she stood holding it, furious that even a piece of cotton could present a decision she didn’t want to make.
She put it back.
The trip folder was on her bedside table. She had printed the confirmation because phone batteries failed and reception on the coast could be unreliable. Russell had teased her for it. Later he had asked her to print the directions too.
Ten nights. May sixth to the sixteenth. A small cottage in Gullhaven, three hours from Bellweather, with a path down to the beach and a kitchen in which she had imagined making elaborate breakfasts despite not knowing how to cook them.
She looked at the photograph. The sofa was an unremarkable brown. A lamp stood beside it. Beyond the window, the sea was the color of an old spoon.
There was nothing in the picture that required two people.
She found the host’s number and called before she could turn that observation into another hour of thinking.
“Alma Rusk.”
“Hello. It’s Delia Morrow. I have the cottage from Sunday.”
“Yes, I have you here. Around three, wasn’t it?”
“That was the plan.”
“Any change?”
Delia sat on the edge of the bed.
“There’ll only be one guest.”
“All right.” Paper moved at the other end. “One car?”
“Yes.”
“That’s fine. Same arrival instructions. I’ll meet you with the key.”
“Is there anything else I need to do?”
“No. The booking’s yours.”
Delia pressed her free hand against the suitcase lining.
“Thank you.”
“Safe drive on Sunday.”
The call ended. No one had asked why.
She looked at the time, then at her ring. The small diamond sat crooked on her finger because she had lost weight without intending to. She worked it over the knuckle, slowly, and laid it in the top drawer beside an old watch. The pale band on her skin looked more intimate than the ring had.
She would deal with returning it after the trip. She closed the drawer before she could put it back on merely to make her hand look familiar.
She went back to the kitchen for a glass of water. The yellow colander was still wedged under the other one. She separated them, dried the smaller one, and opened the cupboard.
There wasn’t room beside the mixing bowls. She moved a stack of containers, found a lid that belonged to nothing, and sat down with it in her hand.
At his house she had known which cupboard held the plates. She had known the cold patch beside the kitchen door and the way the bathroom tap needed an extra turn. Her own apartment had never stopped being hers, but she had carried pieces of herself between the two places so often that she hadn’t noticed the pieces accumulating. A charger. A paperback. Coffee he didn’t drink.
She had thought marriage would end the carrying.
The lid snapped when she bent it. She looked at the crack, startled, and put it in the trash.
She packed jeans, sweaters, underwear, and the soft blue shirt she wore on days when no one was taking photographs. Beside the suitcase she put her walking shoes.
She texted Yasmin: I’m going on Sunday.
The reply came a minute later. Want company for the drive?
Delia pictured talking for three hours, being watched kindly when the sea first came into view. She loved her friend. She also wanted to find out what would happen if nobody knew which expression to expect from her.
I’ll drive myself. Thank you.
She put the phone down and opened the trip folder. At the top of the itinerary she had typed both their names in a font she now disliked.
She found a pen in the bedside drawer, tested it on her thumb, and drew a line through Russell’s name.