The hotel had a person whose entire job appeared to be taking wet coats away.
Celia surrendered hers reluctantly. Her phone was in one pocket, a clean pacifier in the other, and she had to ask for it back twice while Adrian stood beside the stroller trying not to laugh.
“There may be a cracker,” she warned the attendant.
“We’ll take good care of it.”
The man’s solemnity undid her. She smiled at him, at the warm stone floor, at the immense windows through which the October sea looked as if it had been ordered to make an effort. The drive had taken longer than they expected because Nell needed a stop and Adrian missed a turn while telling Celia he didn’t need directions. Now it was Friday afternoon, the twenty-third, and they were finally here.
“I wasn’t lost,” he said as they crossed the lobby. “I was committed to the wrong road.”
“For several miles.”
“Commitment is important.”
Their room was upstairs, at the end of a quiet corridor. Celia stopped when Adrian opened the door. There was a sitting room. Not a chair in a bedroom described as a sitting area, but an actual room with a couch and a small dining table, then a bedroom beyond it. The hotel had put a crib where they had agreed, away from the window, and a basket of folded towels in the bathroom. Nell would remain with them except for the two hours of dinner care Celia had discussed with the hotel sitter herself.
She wheeled her daughter inside and stood looking at the view. Water filled the windows. White waves spent themselves against a beach scattered with driftwood. Across the room, Adrian put their bags down and watched her.
“Too much?” he asked.
“I’m deciding whether to live here.”
“That gets expensive after a while.”
“I’ll give up magazines.”
He came to stand behind her, hands settling at her waist. She leaned back against him. His chin touched her hair, and for a while neither said anything. There was no bus to be visited, no cupboard that needed organizing, no reason for her to earn the room by being useful in it.
“I want to show you something,” she said.
He turned his head toward the bedroom.
“Outside,” she said, laughing. “There’s an aquarium at the harbor. A tiny one. I looked it up.”
“You want to go to an aquarium?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you wanted a bath.”
“I have ambitions for both.”
He looked at the windows, which had begun to blur with rain. “Excellent. Fish in water. Us in water. A theme.”
She reached back and touched his cheek. “You don’t have to sound brave. You could stay here.”
“Absolutely not. I need to see what you do when faced with an octopus.”
The aquarium occupied an old harbor building with paint peeling from one doorframe and a donation box beside the entrance. They went after Nell’s feeding, with the baby warm against Celia in the carrier. Adrian wore a brown sweater and the wrong shoes for puddles. Within ten minutes one sock was wet, and he kept making a face at his own foot.
“We could go back,” Celia said.
“And leave before the sea cucumber? I don’t think so.”
An older volunteer led them toward a shallow tank where water moved over stones. Celia held her free hand above it, suddenly remembering school trips and the smell of damp wool coats. Her mother had come as a helper once, when Celia was eight, and Ruth had spent the whole evening afterward pretending to be mortified by how enthusiastically their mother had asked questions.
“You can touch that one with one finger,” the volunteer said.
Adrian read the sign as if he were expecting a trick, then touched the starfish with the expression of a man testing whether an elevator button was live.
“Harder than I thought,” he said.
“You look disappointed.”
“I had unreasonable expectations.”
Nell woke and stared at the light shifting over the tank. Celia turned slightly so she could see without promising herself the baby knew what she was looking at. Adrian moved closer to keep a dripping child from bumping them. He did it without a protective flourish, one hand on the edge of the tank, making room as if they had always gone places together.
At a dark window, an octopus lay folded against rock. Celia and Adrian stood waiting while the volunteer described it to another family. A little girl pressed her palms to the glass.
“Is it sad?” she asked.
“It might just want a quiet afternoon,” Adrian said before he could stop himself.
The volunteer gave him a look. Celia bit the inside of her cheek.
“Very educational,” she whispered as they moved on.
“I was trying to help.”
“You told her it was an introvert.”
They were laughing by the time they reached the shop. Celia bought a postcard with an absurdly cross-looking fish on it and wrote, You would hate the weather, to Ruth. Adrian bought nothing until he saw a small rubber bath toy shaped like the same fish. He held it up to Nell, who considered it with her usual expression of grave reservation.
“That’s going to be her review of everything I choose, isn’t it?” he said.
Celia took a photograph of him holding the toy beside his face. His hair was a damp mess. One corner of his sweater had come untucked from beneath his coat, and he looked perfectly himself. She looked at the photograph for a few seconds longer than necessary before putting the phone away.
They ate soup in a harbor cafe because Celia was hungry now, not at the polished hour of their dinner booking. Adrian traded the dry half of his roll for the crust of hers. When Nell became restless, he offered his arms, and Celia let him take her while she finished. He bounced too enthusiastically at first. Nell objected.
“Less,” Celia murmured.
He adjusted, jaw set with concentration. The baby’s complaint subsided. Celia watched him looking down at her daughter, then up at her, relief briefly naked on his face.
She loved that look. The thought came with alarming ease, and she hid in another spoonful of soup.
Back at the hotel she took her bath while Adrian stayed with Nell in the sitting room. He had offered to call someone for an extra hour, but Celia wanted to know what it felt like to close a door because he was on the other side of it. Warm water covered her knees. Somebody had left a folded towel within reach, and there were no plastic ducks balanced on the rim, no laundry hanging from the shower rail.
She let her head rest against the tub. Through the wall she could hear Adrian speaking in a low, matter-of-fact voice.
“Yes, I agree. A difficult afternoon. The man at the aquarium was very stern.”
Nell made a soft noise.
“Your mother enjoyed it. You should know that about her.”
Celia closed her eyes. When he knocked to ask if she wanted tea, she said no, then changed her mind and asked him to come in for a minute.
He stood in the doorway with Nell held carefully against his shoulder. His wet socks had been replaced by bare feet. The baby had one fist tangled in his sweater.
“Everything all right?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “I wanted to see you.”
He looked at her, then down at Nell, then back. The room felt suddenly much warmer than the bathwater could explain.
“That’s dangerous,” he said.
“What is?”
“Saying things like that when I can’t do anything about it.”
“You can remember.”
He did not answer at once. Then he said, “I will,” and closed the door slowly behind him.
At six thirty the hotel called to say the sitter would be an hour late. Celia was fastening her earrings. Adrian had put on a clean shirt, and Nell had chosen that moment to reject sleep in a loud and deeply personal way.
“Her earlier booking had a problem,” the woman on the phone explained. “I’m very sorry. We can move your table.”
Celia looked at the dress she had brought and at the baby, pink with effort in Adrian’s arms. She could feel the old instinct lining up: say it was fine, cancel dinner, tell Adrian she hadn’t really wanted to go. At least one of those things was untrue.
“Could we have something sent up while we wait?” she asked. “And keep the table for later?”
“Of course.”
When she hung up, Adrian asked, “What can I do?”
“Get the menu.”
“I could call—”
“I’m hungry. You’re holding a baby who doesn’t care which restaurant we go to. Get the menu.”
He obeyed. By the time Nell settled, dinner had become a floor picnic beside the window: bread and little plates spread over a towel, Celia in her robe again because she refused to risk her dress, Adrian with his sleeves rolled up and Nell asleep beside them in the crib. He had ordered enough food for people who had been rescued from a mountain.
“You asked for something to tide us over,” Celia said.
“I panicked.”
“About the olives?”
“There were several kinds.”
She tried them all. The window was almost black now, their reflections gathered together in it. Adrian took the plate she was holding so she could lean back on one hand, and she put her feet in his lap. He rubbed the arch of one foot with his thumb while she ate something crisp and salty that she could not identify.
“I didn’t bring you here to have dinner on a towel,” he said.
“I know.”
“Are you disappointed?”
She considered the question instead of saying the nice thing. “A little. I want to wear my dress.”
“Then we’ll go later.”
“And this is very good.”
“The olives?”
She touched his knee with her toes. “Yes. The olives.”
He grinned. It made him look younger and less guarded, and she wanted the real dinner fiercely all over again, wanted to be across a table from him with nowhere to go afterward except back here.
When the sitter arrived, Celia took time to speak with her rather than hurrying off guiltily. She checked the arrangement, left her number and changed into the dress. Adrian was waiting in the hall when she came out. His expression made her stop smoothing the fabric over her waist.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing useful.”
“Try.”
He stepped close enough that his sleeve brushed her bare arm. “I want to take that off later.”
She stared at him, then felt herself smile. “That was quite useful.”
At the restaurant she ordered dessert first. Not to be whimsical; she had seen it on the menu and wanted it more than another main course. The server took the request seriously. Adrian ordered coffee and a second spoon.
“I didn’t say I’d share,” she said.
“I live in hope.”
They sat beside a high window. Nothing was visible beyond it except a faint line of foam when a wave broke. The room was quiet in a way Celia could feel in her shoulders. She had changed from checking her phone every few minutes to leaving it faceup beside her plate where a call would show. Adrian’s stayed in his pocket. When she noticed, he looked at her and said, “I’m here,” without making a ceremony of it.
She gave him the spoon.
Over the dessert they argued about which of them would survive longer on a deserted island. Adrian maintained that practical problem-solving mattered. Celia pointed out that he had complained about one wet sock for two hours and would need a colleague to move his roasting pans. He countered that she had bought a postcard instead of a rain hat.
“Because my sister needs evidence that I’m having a good time.”
“Do you?” he asked.
She looked at him. He had put down his spoon. The question had landed in a quieter place than the game.
“No,” she said. “I know.”
He held her hand over the table, his thumb moving once across her knuckles. When they went upstairs, she leaned into him in the elevator, delightfully conscious of how the dress fastened and of his promise about it.
The sitter gave them a quiet report and left. Nell had woken once and settled again. Celia stood over the crib for a minute, listening, while Adrian signed the hotel slip at the door. Then she took off her shoes without switching on the overhead light.
“Come here,” she said.
He came immediately. She put his hands at her waist and walked him backward toward the window until they could see themselves in it. Two dim figures against the black sea, the room gathered behind them. She had spent the afternoon looking outward. Now she liked the reflection better.
“Is it always like this for you?” she asked.
“What?”
“Beautiful rooms. Somebody finding things before you ask for them.”
“Sometimes.”
“Do you stop noticing?”
He considered it. “More often than I’d like.”
“I was going to ask whether you thought I was being silly.”
“I think you’re making me notice.”
She turned in his arms. “I don’t want to be an educational experience.”
“You’re a fairly expensive one.”
She laughed and tapped his chest. His hand tightened at her back.
“I don’t usually stand by the window this long,” he said. “I look when I arrive. Then there’s something to read. Or I go down to dinner with people who have the same view in their rooms, and we talk about something completely different.”
“How terrible.”
“It isn’t. I like parts of that life. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t.”
She was glad he said so. She liked the part of him that enjoyed things, who had wanted all the olives and a second spoon, who bought himself good coats and still forgot how to dress for a beach. She did not want him to spend their time together proving he could be humble about the money.
“Then show me something you like,” she said. “Tomorrow. Something you would choose.”
“There’s a path along the headland. No aquarium volunteers to frighten me.”
“How far?”
“As far as we feel like going.”
“Good answer.”
He kissed the side of her neck, and she lost interest in the path. The high window cooled the air beside them. She moved closer, sliding her arms beneath his jacket, finding the warmth she had wanted on the ferry. It was no longer an imagining. She knew how his skin felt beneath her cheek. The knowledge made her impatient in a new, delightful way.
“You made a very specific promise downstairs,” she reminded him.
“I remember.”
“I’m beginning to think you don’t intend to keep it.”
He drew back, looked at her and began smiling. She reached past him to close the curtain, shutting the sea and their reflection away.
The following morning they walked the beach with Nell bundled against the wind. Adrian found a shell with a hole through it and offered it to Celia. She turned it in her fingers, then gave it back to the tide because it was broken in a way that made it sharp.
“No souvenir?” he asked.
“I have the fish postcard.”
“Ruth has that.”
“Then I’ll have to remember the rest.”
He put an arm around her, and she tucked her cold hand into his coat pocket. There was a hotel receipt in it and half a packet of crackers, already softened at the corners. She began laughing. He asked what was funny, but by then Nell had woken and was making her opinion of the wind known, and Celia could only shake her head and bring them both a little closer as they turned toward the steps.