The key came attached to a paper tag.
Soren laid it on Delia’s kitchen table beside his car keys, then moved the car keys away so there could be no confusion. On the tag he had written UPSTAIRS in plain black letters.
Delia looked at it, then at him.
“I said I’d have an answer.”
“I know. You can still say no.”
“I was going to say yes.”
He smiled, but did not reach for her. She picked up the key. It was new, the edges bright, the head a slightly different shape from his own.
“Does it stick?” she asked.
“Only if you pull the door toward you. Push a little.”
“That feels like information I should have had before accepting.”
“There’s still time.”
She took her own key ring from the bowl on the counter and worked the new key onto it. The metal ring resisted. Soren offered a thumbnail; she refused it, then accepted when her own nail bent painfully. Between them they got the key on without further injury.
“There,” she said.
He put his hand over hers. “There.”
She kissed him. It was meant to be brief, but he leaned into it and she found herself backed gently against the table, the keys closed in her palm. They made an absurd amount of noise when she finally set them down.
“I have something for you too,” she said.
His eyebrows rose.
“Don’t look like that. It’s a drawer.”
She led him to the bedroom and opened the bottom drawer of the small chest beside her wardrobe. It contained two things she had failed to find another home for: a scarf and a packet of spare buttons. She removed both with slightly less ceremony than she had intended.
“Almost a drawer.”
He laughed. “Thank you.”
“For clothes. If you want. So you don’t have to bring everything every time.”
“I do want.”
He put his bag on the bed and took out a shirt, folding it with the care of someone aware he was being watched. Delia reached to fix the fold, caught herself, and moved the scarf to the wardrobe instead.
When she turned back, the shirt lay in the drawer. It looked surprisingly ordinary there. She liked it more than she had expected.
Soren shut the drawer and caught her hand. “Come out with me.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere that doesn’t involve making furniture.”
The bookcase stood finished beside the window, pale green and slightly uneven in the places they had agreed not to inspect too closely. Delia gave it a fond look, then went to find her shoes.
They walked to a small weekend market held in a courtyard behind the library. Delia had passed it often without stopping. Today they had no errand to complete and no table to reach at an appointed time. Soren stopped at a stall selling old records. Delia browsed handmade notebooks she did not need, then returned to find him holding a sleeve with a damaged corner.
“You have a record player?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“On the shelf beside the sofa.”
She tried to picture the shelf. She could remember the books and a small lamp, but apparently she had been too occupied with the man to inventory his possessions.
“I thought that was something else.”
“A very flat toaster?”
“Possibly.”
He bought the record, then made her listen to a song from it on his phone at a volume barely audible over the market. She did not much like it. He watched her face and sighed before she said anything.
“You don’t.”
“It’s a lot of flute.”
“It’s not all flute.”
“The flute is making a strong case for itself.”
He put the phone away, laughing. They moved on. At another stall Delia found a small print of a building she knew, its windows rendered in a crooked line. She stood looking at it long enough that Soren asked whether she wanted it.
The woman behind the stall looked up from a paperback. “That’s the building across from the old post office.”
“I know,” Delia said. “I pass it on the way to work.”
“It’s going to have the front cleaned. I wanted to draw it before they did.”
Delia looked more closely. The crooked line had caught a tilt she had never consciously noticed. One window stood slightly higher than its neighbor. Above the door, a small stone decoration had lost part of its edge.
“Do you always draw buildings?”
“Mostly. They stay where I put them.”
Soren moved to look at another print. Delia watched him for a moment, seeing him in the unfamiliar setting: the record tucked under his arm, his head bent, his attention absorbed by something she had not chosen. He was looking at a narrow alley with no obvious attraction at all.
“That one?” she asked.
“I like the light.”
She stepped beside him. The light came through a gap between roofs, a pale strip on a wall. The rest of the alley was dark. She could see why he liked it, though she still preferred the building she knew.
“It’s good,” she said.
He looked up. “You’re allowed not to like everything I like.”
“You heard me describe the flute.”
“I did.”
The woman behind the stall smiled into her book. Delia returned to the first print and looked at its price. It was more than she usually spent on something that served no practical purpose, less than she had feared.
“I want it. But I don’t know where I’d put it.”
“You could find somewhere.”
She bought it and carried it home herself, wrapped in paper. Soren took the records. Neither object matched anything they had discussed buying that morning, which made the walk back feel pleasantly wasteful.
At the apartment, Delia propped the print against the wall above her finished bookcase. Soren stood behind her, his hands resting lightly on her hips.
“There?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
“Higher.”
She lifted it.
“Too high.”
“You are very difficult to employ.”
“The pay is poor.”
She set it down and turned in his arms. “We should take a few days somewhere.”
He looked surprised, then pleased. “Yes.”
“In the fall. If we can.”
“I can look at September.”
The possibility had been in her mind for a few days, but she had not known whether it would feel like planning too far ahead. Now that she had said it, she wanted dates. She wanted to imagine a small bag and a road neither of them took every other weekend.
They sat at the table with her laptop and his calendar. September contained several things they could not move. Delia had work commitments; Soren had bookings and the ordinary difficulty of leaving a small business. They found four days beginning September twentieth, a Thursday, which meant both would use some leave or coverage rather than stealing the whole trip from weekends.
“Three nights?” she asked.
“Three nights. Home Sunday.”
They looked at a place near a lake, then a small town farther inland, then a hotel that cost more for one night than either wanted to spend. Soren suggested camping. Delia stared at him.
“I own no equipment.”
“I have a tent.”
“That doesn’t answer the larger concern.”
He smiled. “Which is?”
“Sleeping on the ground.”
“There are mats.”
“Thin pieces of ground.”
He laughed and closed the camping page. She proposed a hotel with a pool. He pointed out that it was beside a highway. She looked at the map and conceded the point. They kept searching, sometimes in silence, sometimes reading descriptions aloud in the exaggerated voices such descriptions seemed to invite.
Delia found a small inn in a town neither had visited, within a few hours of both their homes. There were walks nearby, an old theater with occasional performances, and a lake close enough for an afternoon without requiring them to sleep beside it. The room they could afford had one large bed and a window overlooking the garden rather than the water.
“I can live without the view,” she said.
“I’d rather have this price.”
She clicked through the photographs, checking the bathroom because she had learned that photographs of flowers could conceal important omissions. Soren leaned over her shoulder.
“Actual walls,” he said.
“A major advantage.”
They added the room cost and an estimate for travel, then divided it. The figure was manageable, though Delia would need to be careful the month before. She said so. Soren nodded and revised the restaurant budget downward without offering to cover her half.
“We can bring lunch some days.”
“You can bring lunch. I can buy the ingredients.”
“That seems fair.”
Before she booked, Delia read the cancellation terms. She made no comment about them. Soren waited while she finished, then asked whether the dates worked with the museum.
“I’ll request the two days on Monday. I have the leave.”
“I need final confirmation from my assistant.”
They held the room with a refundable reservation and agreed to confirm the work arrangements before the deadline. Delia entered both their names. Soren read the screen, checked the dates, and transferred his half of the deposit while she was still looking at the confirmation.
For a moment she did not move. The practical details had occupied them so completely that she had almost forgotten the pleasure beneath them. Four days. A room neither had chosen for anyone else. The picture was still incomplete, and she wanted to be in it.
Soren touched her knee beneath the table. “Good?”
“Very.”
They ordered food because neither wanted to go out again. While they waited, Delia found a frame she had been saving and discovered it was entirely the wrong size for the new print. Soren said he could trim a mount when she found the right frame.
He put the record on the table, then searched for the song on his phone again. This time he connected it to the little speaker on her shelf. Delia groaned when she recognized the opening.
“You didn’t hear it properly outside.”
“Perhaps that was a mercy.”
“One minute.”
She gave him one minute. The flute arrived promptly, as though summoned by their argument. He watched her expression with such hope that she nearly pretended to like it, then shook her head.
“I’m sorry.”
He laughed and lowered the volume. “I liked this when I was young.”
“The drummer period?”
“Before it.”
She listened differently for a moment, trying to hear the boy he had been instead of the man in her kitchen. It did not improve the flute, but it made her want to keep the song on.
“Show me the drums,” she said.
“What?”
“The rhythm. You must remember.”
He protested, then tapped it on the table, first with his fingertips and then with both hands. He was better than she expected. She tried to copy him and immediately lost the beat. He slowed it down, laughing when she became indignant at her own left hand.
“This is why I didn’t become a musician,” she said.
“You wanted a goat.”
“A much more achievable ambition.”
He took her left hand and guided it against the table. She stopped paying attention to the rhythm. His fingers were warm around hers, his shoulder close. When he looked up to see whether she had understood, she kissed him.
The song continued without their assistance. By the time she leaned back, the flute had ended.
“Better?” he asked.
“Considerably.”
He turned the music down further, and she rested against his side while they waited for their food.
She looked back at the print. “Was the offer to frame that another excuse to bring tools into my apartment?”
“I’ve already painted here.”
“That was an emergency.”
“A green emergency.”
She folded the print back into its paper, smiling. The keys on the table caught the light when she moved them out of the way. She picked them up and walked to the bedroom, putting them into the bag she would take to Gullhaven the following weekend.
When she returned, Soren was reading the market receipt, trying to identify which of his records had been charged at the lower price.
“What time should I arrive next Saturday?” she asked.
“Whenever you want. Film starts at eight.”
“It’s the last discussion night?”
“This run, yes.”
“I’ll come in the afternoon.”
He looked up. “You don’t have to help.”
“I wasn’t offering.”
“Good.”
“I intend to sit in the best seat and complain about your choice.”
“I’ve saved that seat specially.”
She went to him and sat on his lap, making him abandon the receipt. His arms came around her. For a while they stayed there, the room warm with the last light of the afternoon, the promised trip open on the laptop beside them.
“I love you,” she said, still liking how it felt to say it without preparing.
He kissed her shoulder. “I love you too.”
The buzzer sounded downstairs. Neither of them moved immediately.
“Food,” she reminded him.
“Unfortunately.”
She slid off his lap and went to answer, laughing when he followed close enough to catch her hand before she reached the door.