Nora slept until one on Thursday, then found Lucy at the kitchen table sorting debate cards into two piles. School had let out early for a teacher workday. One pile was marked QUESTIONS I WANT, the other QUESTIONS I’LL GET. Nora recognized the distinction from every difficult conversation she’d had that month. “I haven’t called …
The little train out of town left at ten-fifteen on Sunday. Nora had chosen it from the schedule Sam sent, not because the destination offered anything remarkable, but because it gave them four hours that did not begin with an appointment or end at somebody’s front door. She had to be at work at ten …
Iris was standing in the kitchen with both hands on the table when I went to tell Richard the vans were arriving. At first I thought she had dropped something. Then she closed her eyes and breathed through a silence that made me stop in the doorway. “Iris?” She opened her eyes when it passed. …
On Monday afternoon, Lucy found Nora at the kitchen table with Ryan’s old address written on a scrap of paper. She had taken it from the clinic form and looked up the street. The building was still there; the name on the current property listing was not his. A photograph showed new windows and the …
On Thursday morning, the conservatory looked like a room holding its breath. Most of the stock had gone to the new workshop. The long benches were empty. Adam and his team had already secured and marked the sections that would travel, and the remaining glass reflected a sky I seemed to be seeing through it …
Lucy sat on Nora’s bed while Nora tried on the blue dress. She had come in to borrow a safety pin for a debate board, then stayed to ask whether the shoes were meant for dancing or merely surviving it. Nora demonstrated a turn on the bedroom rug and caught the edge of the laundry …
Our last large order from the conservatory was for a dinner at the hotel where Megan had been married. I had agreed to it months earlier, when the date was merely a Wednesday and not two days before the end of my marriage as a place to live. The hotel was celebrating an anniversary. There …
The first flat had a kitchen with no window and a landlord who called the bedroom generous. I stood in the doorway, looking at the space between the bed and the wall. “Generous to whom?” He laughed as if I had made a delightful joke. I had not intended to. There was nothing wrong with …
Nora woke at one on Thursday to the sound of rain tapping the gutter. She had come home from the night shift at six-thirty, eaten an egg standing up and slept in a room that still looked faintly wrong without Paul’s coat on the chair. Four hours and twenty minutes was not enough sleep for …
Richard asked to speak to me in the dining room. I nearly suggested the conservatory out of habit. Instead I said six o’clock and arrived at six, with the day’s work finished and my coat still on. He had poured two glasses of wine. “I don’t want one,” I said. “You always liked this.” “I …
