The apartment had no kitchen cabinet doors, a bathroom window painted shut, and the first room Celia had wanted for herself in seven years.
“Those will be back on,” the owner said, following her gaze to the cabinets. “Everything will. I can’t hand it over until July first. The people doing the repairs have given me a date, and this time I’ve put it in writing.”
Ruth stood beside the refrigerator with her arms folded. “The first time they gave you a date, the ceiling was still on the floor.”
“That was a different room.”
Celia tried not to smile. Her sister had supplied flowers for the owner’s daughter’s wedding and apparently considered this a permanent license to speak plainly.
The one-bedroom apartment occupied the upper floor of a little house off Alder Street. From the living room Celia could see a crooked row of cedar trees and, between two roofs, a narrow slice of water. There was space beneath the window for a table. The bedroom could hold her bed and a crib if she didn’t insist on keeping every piece of furniture she had acquired to fill Quentin’s rooms.
“You said the rent includes heat?” she asked.
The owner confirmed it and named the amount again. Celia had worked out her income three times the night before, her savings twice more. The number remained possible. Not comfortable enough to stop thinking, but possible.
She went into the bedroom. A yellow patch of January sunlight lay on the bare floor, astonishing after a week of rain. She could almost see the curtains she’d choose. Something she could wash, not something that required a conversation with a specialist.
“Cel?” Ruth stood in the doorway. “You want to look at the other one?”
There was another apartment, available in February, with a dark little bedroom above a late-night restaurant. It cost more. Celia had been preparing to take it because waiting at her sister’s seemed like asking too much.
“I like this one.”
“Then say so.”
Celia looked toward the living room, where the owner was checking her phone. “I can’t stay with you that long.”
“Can we discuss that without deciding it by whispering in somebody else’s bedroom?”
They went downstairs to the owner’s vacant dining room. Celia asked to see the lease and read it at the table while Ruth inspected the garden. The start date was July first, the deposit ordinary and payable from Celia’s own account. She asked what would happen if the repairs ran late. The owner explained the provision and wrote down whom she should contact.
Two years earlier, she and Quentin had nearly moved into a small rental together across town. They’d been quarreling; she had wanted fewer rooms, lower bills, something that didn’t eat every spare dollar before either of them enjoyed it. Then he’d asked her to host a weekend for two clients. She’d refused because she’d promised to visit Ruth after her divorce.
By the time she came home, he had canceled the moving deposit.
“We clearly aren’t ready to make joint decisions,” he’d said. “You can’t prioritize your sister and expect me to rearrange my life.”
She had stayed. Her savings were tied up in the existing rent and the furniture they’d chosen on credit. The new place disappeared, and after a few months they stopped mentioning it.
Now she checked the account number before making her transfer. Her own money left her own account. Ruth came back inside with a leaf stuck to her shoe.
“Done?”
“Done.”
“Well. We’ll need curtains.”
At home, Ruth put the kettle on while Celia spread the lease on the table. Her sister read the date and tapped it with one chipped fingernail.
“July. You can stay until July. But I need you to hear something before you start offering to make this painless.”
Celia sat down.
“I get up early. Sometimes I work in the kitchen. I’ll need you out of it when I’m doing flowers. And I’m charging you something for groceries and utilities.”
“Of course.”
Ruth named a number. It was lower than rent anywhere else and high enough to mean she wasn’t pretending Celia’s presence cost nothing.
“I’ll clean,” Celia said.
“You’ll clean up after yourself. We can split the other things. I don’t want you doing my laundry because you’re afraid I’ll ask you to leave.”
“I wasn’t going to—”
Ruth looked at her.
“Fine,” Celia said. “Maybe I was.”
They made room in the pantry together. Celia moved the fancy cereal Ruth bought for guests and discovered it was two years out of date. Ruth accused her of arriving with unreasonable standards. For five minutes they argued about whether cereal could be stale if it had never been opened, and Celia felt more at home than she had while carefully thanking her for everything.
When the kettle clicked off, Ruth asked, “When are you telling him?”
Celia knew who she meant. Quentin’s remaining belongings and hers were being disentangled by short messages, transfers and one awkward collection while he was at work. He had confirmed his January twenty-third departure. Overseas until December, unless something changed.
“After I move.”
Ruth set down the cups. “That’s months.”
“I know.”
“You’ll be very pregnant.”
“I know that too.”
“What happens if he finds out?”
“Then he finds out. I’m not asking everyone to pretend I don’t exist.” Celia heard the edge in her voice and hated that Ruth was the one receiving it. “I want my address sorted. I want to be living somewhere he hasn’t arranged. When I tell him, I want him to understand I’m not coming back.”
“You’re already not coming back.”
“You know that.”
Ruth sat opposite her. “He doesn’t get to vote. And a baby isn’t going to make him less involved.”
Celia looked at the lease. The lines blurred a little. She was frightened of practical conversations that would begin with her needing something and end with her agreeing to more than she meant. Frightened of being told, sensibly, that she should live with Dorothy, that Quentin could pay the bills, that her own small plan was ridiculous.
She was also angry. It was hard to separate the two.
“July,” she said. “When I’m in my own place. I’ll tell him then.”
Ruth shook her head, but she pushed Celia’s cup across the table. “Write it down somewhere you can’t tidy it away.”
Celia opened the calendar on her phone and added a reminder for July second. Tell Quentin. Two words. They looked inadequate beneath the little colored dot.
At the depot that afternoon Margaret had organized an informal gathering for the people making the bus happen. She called it a planning tea. Imogen called it twenty minutes, because several of them had other things to do.
There were folding chairs in a semicircle beside the bus. Celia sat with a plate on her lap while a professional fitter explained where the shelving would go. Adrian arrived late, carrying an open box of pastries with an expression that suggested he’d been sent for something else and discovered a better idea.
“They were still warm,” he told Margaret.
“I asked for napkins.”
He looked at the box. “I have failed in a fairly attractive way.”
Celia lowered her face to hide her smile. He saw it anyway. His own smile changed, became quieter. She felt it in the pit of her stomach.
Their messages that week had been brief and oddly sustaining. He’d asked whether the interview had ended in her being offered the keys to the bus. She’d told him she’d accepted the assignment, but Imogen remained unwilling to let her drive. He’d sent a photograph of a book about sailing and asked whether buying a second one counted as progress. None of it required a reply within minutes. None of it was a list of what she should do next.
Imogen asked Celia to explain the first collection plan. She spoke for a few minutes, answered questions and found herself enjoying the resistance. A volunteer wanted books only he considered improving. Celia asked him what he’d read on his last vacation. When he admitted it was a thriller, the discussion grew more useful.
Afterward, while the others inspected the bus, Celia asked Imogen for a private moment. They stepped into the office. She told her about the pregnancy, the expected August due date, the ordinary appointments already beginning to fill her calendar. She had worried Imogen might look at the temporary assignment and regret offering it.
Instead Imogen reached for a pen. “We’ll make a maternity plan. Not today. I need to check the school arrangements first.”
“I can get quite a lot done before then.”
“Good. You can also take time when you need it. I need a coordinator, not a martyr.”
The words were brusque enough to keep Celia from feeling fussed over. She thanked her and went outside.
Margaret was putting lids on food containers. Celia helped, then said, “There’s something I wanted to tell you myself.”
Margaret listened, a container suspended in one hand. When Celia finished, her face broke into delight so immediate that Celia’s throat hurt.
“Oh, my dear. How lovely.” Then her expression faltered. “It is lovely, isn’t it? I shouldn’t assume.”
“It is.”
“August. You’ll be warm. I remember Adrian arriving in February and thinking summer babies must be much easier, although I suppose people who have summer babies think the opposite.”
Celia laughed. Margaret put the container down and hugged her, briefly, one hand patting between her shoulder blades.
“Does Adrian know?” she asked when she let go.
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Margaret looked over her shoulder toward her son, who was speaking to the fitter. “He didn’t say.”
“I told him privately.”
“Quite right.” Margaret picked up the container again, now unable to fit the lid. “Well. We shall have to be sensible. Not too much lifting. And there are chairs—”
“There are quite a few. We’re standing beside a bus.”
Margaret looked at it, then laughed at herself. “Yes. We are.”
Adrian found them still laughing. He didn’t ask what he’d missed. He took the container his mother thrust at him and succeeded with the lid immediately, to her annoyance.
When Margaret went to find Imogen, Celia leaned against the edge of the folding table.
“I’ve found an apartment,” she said.
“That’s good.” His eyes stayed on hers. “Is it?”
“Very. It’s being repaired. July first.”
“Do you need—” He stopped, smiling a little. “You probably don’t need me to do anything.”
“I might need someone who can lift a box without dismantling the building.”
“Then I’m your second choice.”
She laughed and found she didn’t want to step away. His sleeve brushed her wrist. Just the cloth, not his hand, but she knew exactly where he stood.
“I’ve been trying to decide whether to ask you to dinner,” he said.
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It has occupied an unreasonable amount of useful time.”
“Adrian—”
“I know. It’s been a week.” He glanced at the half-cleared table. “I don’t mean a planning tea where my mother tells us where to sit. I mean dinner. With you.”
She wanted to say yes with such intensity that it frightened her. This was too close to everything else. She didn’t yet trust her own appetite for being wanted.
“I can’t do that yet.”
He nodded, looking down for a moment. It mattered that she could see the disappointment. He wasn’t simply pleased with whatever answer she gave.
“All right.”
“I didn’t say never.”
He looked up.
Her face was hot now. “I just need some time. To get used to this. All of it.”
“Can we still talk?”
“I’d like that.”
“Then we’ll talk.”
Imogen called him over to ask about the equipment delivery. He started away, then came back for the pastry box and offered it to Celia.
“Take one for your sister. Unless she hates pastries.”
“She hates being told to share them.”
“Take two.”
Celia chose two, wrapped them in the napkins someone else had remembered, and watched him go. She had a job, a future address and a conversation she wanted to continue. She carried the pastries to her car without apologizing for taking the largest ones.