Quentin was early.
Celia saw him from the window at twelve minutes to two on December 13, standing beside his car with a gift bag in one hand. He looked up at the building, then down at his phone. She stepped back before he could see her.
“He’s here,” she told Ruth.
Her sister glanced at the clock. “He can be here for twelve minutes.”
“I can’t make him stand in the cold.”
“Then let him in.”
“I thought you’d say I should stick to the time.”
Ruth set her cup down. “Celia, I’m not your difficult-decision vending machine.”
That made her laugh, briefly. She took a breath, looked at Nell asleep in her bassinet, and pressed the door release when the bell rang.
She heard his footsteps on the stairs. The sound was familiar enough to confuse her body: her hands moved toward her hair before she stopped them. Then he appeared, carrying a bag with a gold rabbit on it, his scarf tucked too neatly into his coat.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello.”
He leaned forward as if they would kiss in greeting. She moved aside to let him through, and the failed gesture remained between them for a second before he saw Ruth.
“Ruth.”
“Quentin.”
There was no quarrel in her sister’s voice, which Celia appreciated more than she could say. Ruth gathered her cup and went to the kitchen, leaving the door open.
Quentin took off his coat. Underneath he wore a sweater Celia had never seen. She found herself relieved by its unfamiliarity.
“Where is she?”
Celia led him to the bassinet. Nell had woken at the bell. She lay watching the moving figures above her, her mouth pursed, one foot steadily pushing beneath the blanket.
Quentin stopped so abruptly Celia nearly touched his shoulder.
“She’s bigger than the picture.”
“It was only nine days ago.”
“I mean—” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I mean.”
He set the gift bag on the floor and bent over her. For a moment his face was hidden from Celia. She watched the back of his neck, the small pale mark below his hair where a childhood accident had left a scar. Once she had kissed that mark. The memory arrived without longing, merely a record of a life that had happened.
“Hello, Nell.” His voice sounded unlike him. “I’m your dad.”
Nell lifted both arms, then let them fall. Quentin smiled with a startled uncertainty that made him look younger and, somehow, more of a stranger.
“Can I pick her up?”
“Yes.”
He put his hands out, then stopped. “How?”
Celia showed him. She kept her voice ordinary, the way she would for anyone who had not held this baby before. His hands were careful. When Nell shifted he froze, and Celia steadied his wrist.
“She’s all right. Sit down if that’s easier.”
He did, holding Nell away from his chest until Celia moved a cushion beneath his elbow. The baby regarded the blue of his sweater. Celia sat opposite him, resisting the urge to take her back simply because this was unfamiliar.
Ruth came in with tea. Quentin thanked her. It was such an ordinary courtesy that the room settled a little around it.
“She looks like me,” he said.
“Sometimes,” Celia answered.
“Mom said she had your eyes.”
“Dorothy saw her on the call on December fifth.”
He glanced up. “She’s very upset.”
“I know.”
“I don’t think you realize how upset.”
Ruth’s cup touched its saucer. Celia kept her gaze on Quentin.
“I’ve spoken to her. She’s coming on the eighteenth.”
“Good.” He looked back at the baby, perhaps remembering why he was here. “Good.”
For several minutes they talked about Nell. What she liked, how she fed, which part of the day was easiest. Quentin asked whether she was sleeping through the night, with a hope so undisguised that Ruth made an unhelpful noise in the kitchen. Celia ignored it.
“Not reliably.”
“That must be tiring.”
“It is.”
“You should have told me.”
She had known the sentence would come. Hearing it in the room while he held the baby hurt differently from hearing it through a screen.
“Yes,” she said.
He stared at Nell’s little hand against his wrist. Celia let him have the answer without surrounding it with her reasons.
The gift was a bear almost half Nell’s size and a dress with a stiff embroidered collar. He looked anxious when Celia lifted it out, as if its suitability were an examination.
“Thank you,” she said. “It’s lovely.”
“The woman said three to six months.”
“Then we’ll try it.”
“I didn’t know what she had.”
“You can ask.”
He nodded. Nell began to squirm, her face puckering. Quentin shifted her too quickly; she protested. He held her out to Celia at once, the anxiety in his face almost comically plain.
“I think she—”
“She’s hungry.”
Celia took her, and the relief of having her daughter’s weight back against her was so strong she hoped it did not show. Quentin watched her settle in the corner of the couch. Ruth turned on the kettle again for no reason except to give them another sound.
“Can I get you something?” he asked.
“My water. On the table.”
He handed it to her. The gesture was unremarkable, late by months, and still something he had done. Celia thanked him and drank.
When Nell had finished feeding, Quentin asked to hold her again. This time he sat before Celia passed her over. He folded the cloth across his shoulder without being told, although he put it on the wrong side and had to move it.
“There,” he said when she was settled.
Nell regarded the room from her new position. Celia watched Quentin’s hand, waiting for it to slip or tighten. It did neither. After a few minutes her attention loosened enough for her to pick up her tea.
“I keep trying to think what I was doing,” he said.
“When?”
“August. The fourteenth. I looked in my calendar.”
Celia lowered her cup. She did not want an account of a meeting or a dinner to occupy the day Nell had arrived. He must have seen something of that in her face, because he shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter. That’s the thing. I can’t remember the day properly.”
She looked at the baby against his shoulder. For him it had been a day without a name until a week ago. She had given it a meaning he would never be able to experience as she had.
“I remember Ruth holding a plastic cup I didn’t want,” she said. “I wasn’t very nice to her. She was remarkably patient.”
He smiled faintly. “That sounds like Ruth.”
“It was very much Ruth.”
From the kitchen her sister said, “I can hear you.”
Quentin’s smile grew for a second. Nell moved her head against his shoulder, leaving a small damp patch on his sweater. He looked down, startled, then stayed still while she found a comfortable place.
Celia drank her tea. The afternoon did not ask her to love him again. It asked her to let him sit there, learning something she had not been entitled to keep entirely to herself. That was difficult enough without making it mean more.
The hour they had planned was nearly over before they reached the difficult questions.
Quentin wanted another visit the next day. Celia had an appointment and would not cancel it. He looked offended, then seemed to hear himself insisting she reorganize her day around his return. His eyes moved to the stroller, the drying rack, the list attached to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a tomato.
“You’ve got a whole routine,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know any of it.”
“You can learn.”
He rested his elbows on his knees. “I don’t want to be a visitor forever.”
“I don’t want that for her either.”
It surprised him enough that he looked up. Perhaps he had imagined every conversation becoming a fight for a place. She could not promise that they would never fight. She could give him this answer now.
They chose December 20 for another short visit. Afterward, they would set aside time to discuss money and regular contact, with their questions written down and advice from people who knew more than either of them did. Quentin wanted answers faster. Celia wanted to know what he would do after the first shock had worn off. Neither of them got everything they wanted that afternoon.
“Is he here a lot?” Quentin asked as he put on his coat.
“Adrian?”
“Yes, Adrian.”
“He’s here because I want him here.”
Quentin’s mouth tightened. “I’m only asking.”
“Then that’s the answer.”
He looked toward Nell, now drowsing against Celia’s shoulder. She could see him making the effort not to add something. She appreciated the effort, although she had no intention of rewarding it with a softer account of her life.
“Can you send a picture when she’s in the dress?” he asked.
“If it fits, yes.”
“Even if it doesn’t.”
That caught her. She nodded.
At the door he bent to look at Nell once more. This time he did not try to touch Celia. He brushed a finger over the baby’s sleeve and said, “See you soon.”
After he left, Ruth came out of the kitchen and opened the window an inch.
“Was it hot in here?” Celia asked.
“Very.”
Celia sat down. Nell smelled of Quentin’s laundry detergent, something Celia had not anticipated. She pressed her face into the baby’s hair until she found her own familiar smell beneath it.
“How do you feel?” Ruth asked.
“As if I want to have a very unreasonable reaction and then take it back.”
“Go ahead. I’ll forget.”
“He said she looked like him. I wanted to say she looked like me when I was awake at four in the morning.”
“She does. A resemblance of temperament.”
Celia laughed into Nell’s hair. Then she said, “He was trying.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to be grateful for that.”
“Then don’t be grateful. Notice it and have your lunch.”
Ruth stayed long enough for Celia to eat, then left to collect some greenery from a supplier. In the quiet afterward Celia laid Nell on the blanket and lay down beside her. Her daughter turned toward her with an open, untroubled interest. Nothing in her face asked Celia to solve the rest of her life before five o’clock.
“That was your dad,” Celia told her.
Nell chewed her fist.
“Yes,” Celia said. “That’s probably enough for today.”
Adrian arrived at six, as they had planned. Celia opened the door to find him holding a folded paper from the little cinema near the waterfront.
“We can go, or we can stay,” he said. “I realize I’ve offered alternatives before saying hello.”
“Hello.”
“Hello.”
She kissed him, and the tension that had been sitting between her shoulders all afternoon eased by a degree.
“The sitter isn’t coming until seven.”
“Then we’ve got time to reject every film intelligently.”
They spread the listings on the table. Celia chose an old comedy she had seen before, because she wanted to laugh and not care whether she missed the first few minutes. Adrian professed an attachment to a subtitled film about an architect, then admitted he mostly liked the poster.
“You’re a fraud,” she said.
“Occasionally.”
He glanced toward the bear in the corner, then back to the paper. He did not ask for the story. The absence of the question gave Celia enough room to tell him one thing.
“It went all right.”
“I’m glad.”
“Not wonderful. Not terrible.”
“All right is a lot.”
She studied him. “Did you spend the whole afternoon imagining it?”
“I went for a walk. I ate something disappointing. I looked at my phone too often.”
The honesty warmed her. She had imagined him serenely engaged in a life that could absorb any amount of waiting. Here he was, slightly embarrassed by how much he had wanted to hear from her.
“You could have called.”
“You could have too.” He touched her wrist. “We can get better at this.”
She turned her hand and linked their fingers. “I wanted to see you before I talked about it.”
“You have.”
“Yes.”
She drew him closer and kissed him again, longer this time. Nell objected from her bouncer, offended by the view. Adrian broke away laughing, and Celia felt her own laughter rise to meet his.
When the sitter arrived, they walked to the cinema through a fine mist. Celia had put on lipstick in the hall and chosen the earrings Adrian had not yet seen, small amber drops that swung when she turned her head. He noticed them halfway down the block.
“Those are new.”
“Old. Newly retrieved from the back of a drawer.”
“I like them.”
“You’re supposed to like the person in them.”
“I’m trying not to become tedious about that.”
She slipped her hand into his coat pocket with his. Inside, his keys were warm from his palm.
The cinema was nearly empty. They bought popcorn neither of them needed and sat far enough back that Celia could rest her head against his shoulder without feeling observed. The film began. A woman on the screen shut a door on a man in the rain, and Celia laughed before the joke had fully arrived, with a relief so great it nearly embarrassed her.
Adrian turned his head. She felt his lips against her hair.
Halfway through, he reached for the popcorn at the same moment she did. Their hands met in the tub. It was such an old, foolish courtship accident that she looked at him in the reflected light and began to smile.
“What?” he whispered.
“Nothing.”
“That’s suspicious.”
“Watch your architect.”
“Wrong film.”
She kissed him in the dark, tasting salt, and returned to the screen before the people two rows ahead could turn around. When his hand found hers again, she kept it.