Cecily was already at the reservoir when Annelise arrived, standing beside a map as though she distrusted it.
“It says the short loop is forty minutes,” she said by way of greeting.
“That sounds manageable.”
“According to whom? Someone with enormous legs?”
“We can turn around.”
“I know. I’m objecting to the certainty.”
Annelise zipped her jacket. The morning was clear and cool, the water beyond the fence a dull silver beneath the sun. She had considered bringing coffee, then decided they could choose somewhere afterward if they wanted it. She had considered bringing the speech, too, and left the phone note unopened.
“Left?” she asked.
Cecily looked at the map one more time. “Left.”
The path took them beneath trees whose leaves had begun to change at the edges. For several minutes they walked without talking. Annelise could hear the scrape of her own shoes on loose gravel and the slightly quicker rhythm of her sister’s steps. She slowed without intending to, then realized Cecily had slowed, too.
“We’re doing that thing,” she said.
“What thing?”
“Trying to match each other until we stop entirely.”
Cecily laughed. “You walk.”
“All right.”
They settled into a pace. It was such a small adjustment that Annelise would usually have forgotten it immediately, but she felt the ease of it in her shoulders.
“How’s the printer?” she asked.
“Replaced a part. It prints now, but only if you load half as much paper as it says you can.”
“A compromise.”
“A machine with terms.”
Cecily told her about the office, the tangle of arrivals and phone calls and forms that made every morning feel as if several different schools were trying to occupy the same building. Annelise had known what her sister’s job was called. She had not known how much of it involved deciding which worried adult needed help first.
“Do you like it?” she asked.
“Usually.”
“That sounded surprised.”
“I get asked whether I like children. As if that explains the whole job.”
“Does it help?”
“It does. So does liking a system that works. So does being able to tell a parent that their emergency might be tomorrow’s ordinary email.”
Annelise smiled. “I understand that part.”
“I know you do.”
They came to a narrow stretch where the path ran between the fence and a bank. Annelise went ahead, then waited where it widened. Cecily caught up, breathing easily.
“What about you?” she asked.
“What about me?”
“The choir. You keep saying it’s fine. What’s it actually like?”
Annelise thought about the room, the scraping stands, the first note that never quite arrived from everyone at once.
“It’s louder inside it than I expected.”
“Surely that’s the point.”
“Not the volume. All the separate things happening. I keep hearing the part next to me and wanting to follow it.”
“Do you?”
“Sometimes. Then I stop singing because I know I’m wrong, which is apparently less useful than being wrong with conviction.”
Cecily laughed. “You must hate that.”
“I did. I’m beginning to think it might be good for me.”
Her sister gave her a look.
“Also I like it,” Annelise added. “That might be enough.”
“Better.”
A gust moved through the trees, scattering leaves across the path. They stepped around a patch of mud. Annelise nearly warned Cecily about it, then saw her sister had already chosen the dry edge.
“There’s a performance in November,” she said. “The third. Informal.”
“Are you doing it?”
“I think so. I haven’t quite made myself say it as a firm thing yet.”
“Let me know when you do.”
“I will.”
She wanted to add that Cecily needn’t come, that it was only a small choir, that the music might not be her sort of thing. She let the invitation wait instead of withdrawing it before it existed.
They reached a bench overlooking the water and sat. Cecily stretched her legs in front of her.
“I told Mom I’m keeping Rowan,” she said.
Annelise turned. “After the wedding?”
“No, as a collectible. Yes, after the wedding.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was funny.”
“What did she say?”
“That people would be confused.”
“Which people?”
“Unspecified people. Apparently there are a lot of them, and they are very easily troubled.”
Annelise looked out over the reservoir. “What did Hugo say?”
“He asked whether I wanted him to tell his relatives before the wedding. I said yes. He did.”
“That sounds useful.”
“It was.” Cecily bent one knee and rested her heel on the edge of the path. “I like my name. I don’t want a new signature. That isn’t the only reason, but it is a reason.”
“You don’t need a grand one.”
“I know. Everyone keeps waiting for one.”
Annelise remembered changing her own name, then changing it back. She could have told that story. It was not what her sister had asked for, and she wasn’t certain Cecily had asked for a story at all.
“Do you want me to say anything to Mom?”
“No.”
“All right.”
“I want you to use my name.”
“I can do that.”
Cecily smiled. “Excellent service.”
They sat another minute. A pair of runners passed, speaking in short bursts between breaths. Annelise watched them disappear around the bend and wondered how many times she’d treated her sister’s decisions as the beginning of a task she could complete.
“What else have you two decided?” she asked.
“About the wedding?”
“About anything.”
Cecily considered. “We’re buying a better vacuum cleaner.”
Annelise laughed. “A bold start.”
“The current one sounds as if it resents its purpose.”
“Most appliances do, eventually.”
“And we’re not turning the spare room into a room no one uses because it has to look nice. Hugo wants a desk. I want somewhere to spread things out. We can have both if we stop keeping boxes we haven’t opened in two years.”
“What things?”
“Puzzles, mostly. I like puzzles.”
“You do?”
“See?” Cecily said, not unkindly.
Annelise felt the sting and accepted it. “What kind?”
“Pictures of places. Nothing with a million identical pieces of sky. I want to enjoy myself.”
“Hugo helps?”
“He finds all the edge pieces and then loses interest. It’s a very specific partnership.”
They stood and kept walking. At the next junction, the short loop turned away from the water, while a narrower path continued along the bank. Cecily checked the little sign.
“Do you have time for the longer bit?”
“Yes.”
“No appointment?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Annelise followed her sister down the narrower path. She had left the day open and now felt the benefit in the simple fact of not having to calculate.
They talked about a television series Cecily had abandoned halfway through because everybody in it made decisions no adult she knew would make. Annelise defended the first episode, then admitted she had watched only that one. Cecily called this a weak foundation for a critical position. They argued amiably until the path opened onto a small viewing platform.
A painted board identified birds they might see. Neither saw any of them. Cecily leaned on the rail and pointed to an empty patch of water.
“That’s probably the rare one.”
“Very discreet.”
“The illustration makes it seem much more available.”
Annelise laughed and felt, for the first time that morning, no urge to take care of the moment. It could simply be funny. Her sister did not need her to improve the view.
On the way back, Cecily asked whether she had found shoes for the wedding.
“Yes. I can stand in them. That was the main qualification.”
“Good. I may need you to tell me when I’ve started limping.”
“I can do that, too.”
“And one actual opinion, if you have it. We can put the guest book near the entrance or near the bar. I’m leaning toward the bar because people might actually see it after they arrive.”
“The bar,” Annelise said. “At the entrance they’ll be carrying coats.”
“That’s what I thought.”
There was a pause in which Annelise could have offered to buy pens, design a sign, check the size of the table. She put her hands in her pockets and kept walking.
“Thank you,” Cecily said.
“For the opinion?”
“For leaving it there.”
Annelise winced. “I’m sorry. I know I’ve been—”
“Stop.”
She looked over.
“Not everything needs another apology,” Cecily said. “We had the conversation. I heard you. If every time we talk, you apologize for the last twenty years, we’re still talking about the last twenty years.”
“I don’t mean to make you reassure me.”
“I know. But sometimes I end up doing it anyway.”
Annelise watched the path beneath her feet. Her instinct was to apologize for that, too. The absurdity of it reached her before the words did, and she let out a breath.
“All right.”
Cecily bumped her shoulder lightly. “Tell me something current.”
“Malcolm grows chillies very badly.”
“That is current.”
“He has one red one. I think he’s emotionally invested in it.”
“Are you emotionally invested in him?”
The question was so direct that Annelise’s first response was a laugh. It did not protect her for long.
“Yes.”
Cecily looked at her, then away. “You look happier.”
“I am. Some of the time I’m frightened enough to be annoyed about it.”
“That sounds more believable.”
A few minutes later, they came to a fork neither remembered from the outward walk. One branch climbed through the trees; the other followed the water beneath a low bridge.
“I think we came down that one,” Annelise said.
Cecily looked up the slope. “I don’t.”
“The map showed a loop.”
“The map also promised forty minutes. Its credibility is limited.”
Annelise took out her phone, then saw Cecily looking at it.
“What?”
“Nothing. Check if you want.”
“I don’t have to.”
“You can. This isn’t a test of spontaneity.”
That made her laugh. She opened the map, waited for it to find them, and discovered that the little dot sat in the water.
“Apparently we’ve drowned.”
“A setback.”
They looked at the two paths again. Cecily pointed toward the bridge.
“I want to see where that goes.”
“All right.”
The path narrowed to a damp strip beneath the stone arch. They went single file, Cecily first, Annelise watching her sister’s shoes find the dry places. At the far end, the view opened onto a part of the reservoir they hadn’t seen before, the water bright between two banks of trees.
“Oh,” Cecily said.
They stopped together. For once, neither had a joke ready.
Annelise took a picture of the view on her phone, then lowered it before she could turn the moment into a record of how well they were getting along. Cecily stood with her hands in her jacket pockets, face tilted into the sun.
“Would you come here again?” Annelise asked.
“Yes.”
“With me?”
Her sister looked at her. “That’s what I thought you meant.”
“Good.”
They followed the path until it met a service road. A sign pointed back toward the parking lot, and Cecily gave a satisfied nod as if she’d arranged the outcome.
“You had no idea,” Annelise said.
“Neither did you.”
“True.”
A streak of mud marked the side of Cecily’s shoe. She scraped it against the grass, made it worse, and gave up. Annelise resisted offering a tissue from her bag until Cecily asked whether she had one. Then she handed it over, and they waited while her sister did an entirely adequate job herself.
They reached the wider path again. The parking lot was visible through the trees, sunlight flashing on windshields.
“I’d like him at the wedding,” Annelise said.
“Then ask him.”
“I will. I need to ask properly.”
Her sister glanced at her. “What was improper about the first time?”
“I asked him to solve a problem. Me feeling awkward. Mom trying to find me someone. It wasn’t fair to make him a service with a tie.”
Cecily smiled briefly. “No.”
“This time I want him there because I want him there.”
“That seems clearer.”
“I haven’t said it yet.”
“Then don’t put his name down until you do.”
Annelise nodded.
“The hall needs the final list by the fifteenth,” Cecily added. “You have until then. Whatever he says.”
“Thank you.”
Her sister stopped beside the map where they had begun. “Coffee?”
“Yes.”
“There’s somewhere ten minutes away. I went once with Hugo. The coffee was good, and the chairs were terrible.”
“An unusual recommendation.”
“We’ve done enough sitting.”
Annelise took her keys out. “I’ll follow you.”
At the cafe, the chairs were indeed terrible: narrow, upright, and determined to make a person aware of her spine. They bought coffee and one large pastry to split. Cecily cut it badly with the side of a fork, leaving herself the smaller piece.
“Swap,” Annelise said.
“No. I did it. I accept the consequences.”
“You can take some of mine.”
“I will.”
She did, reaching across halfway through the conversation without asking again. Annelise watched her take the flakiest corner and felt a simple pleasure that did not need to be explained to her sister.
When they left, Cecily said she’d send her a picture of the puzzle currently occupying their dining table.
“Not the wedding seating plan?” Annelise asked.
“No. A much more reasonable arrangement of people and objects.”
Annelise laughed and opened her car door. She had spent most of a morning with her sister and completed almost nothing. She wanted another one.