15 November 2026
The little town in the photograph was perfect. Nobody lived in it.
Maren put Simon’s printed campaign sheet on the table between them. She had asked him to meet her at the flagship on Sunday afternoon, when the builders were elsewhere and Willa was spending the afternoon with her school-neighbor sitter. She had imagined that an empty room would make it easier to be clear. Instead every sound carried: the paper scraping wood, a bus changing gear outside, Simon setting down the coffee he had brought her.
“Is this what we’re doing now?”
“No.”
“Your team thinks it might be.”
“Because I told them it might be.”
He took off his coat. She watched him fold it over the back of a chair, a small delay she could almost feel him wishing would produce a better first sentence.
“There needed to be something ready if we couldn’t get the roof right.”
“The roof isn’t the whole display.”
“I know that.”
“Do they?”
Simon looked at the page. The photographed houses were arranged in an immaculate crescent. Every Christmas tree leaned at the same angle. A printed arrow told a buyer where the town’s pieces could move, although none of them had been moved for the picture.
“I should have talked to you before I commissioned this.”
“You should have talked to me before somebody else had to explain which version of my work might actually appear.”
His jaw tightened. “I didn’t ask them to copy your work.”
“No. You asked them to make the opposite of it.”
“That isn’t fair.”
She wanted unfairness. For about three seconds she wanted it so fiercely that she put both hands beneath the edge of the table, where he couldn’t see them curl.
“What happens to the window if the moving roof goes?” he asked.
“We change it.”
“How?”
“I haven’t solved it yet.”
“Which is exactly the problem.”
It hurt more because his voice wasn’t raised. In the cold afternoon light he looked tired, his light-brown hair flattened on one side as though he had spent the morning dragging his fingers through it. She had kissed the little crease near his mouth a week ago in bed. Now she had to stop herself staring at it.
“Then you say that to me.”
“I did say I didn’t think it would work. You told me you could make it work.”
“And you lost confidence.”
“In that sequence. Yes.”
He stood still after saying it. She had expected him to soften the words, and the fact that he didn’t made her angrier for a moment before it let her breathe.
The failed rehearsal came back in pieces she disliked: her hand on a switch, the waiting children, Anika looking at the time. All those minutes Maren had insisted on because the next adjustment would be the right one. She could not make Simon’s concealed decision the cause of something she had done before she knew about it.
“I kept thinking you wanted it simpler because you didn’t trust what I’d made.”
“I wanted that part simpler because two children couldn’t use it together.”
“I heard both things.”
“I can see that now.”
“But you didn’t ask which one I heard.”
“No.” His hand flattened on the campaign sheet. “I went and got something I could control instead.”
For the first time she sat down. Her knees were cold. She had worn a skirt because she’d planned to take herself somewhere afterward, possibly a restaurant with candles where she could be furious privately and eat something with butter. The plan now seemed absurdly elaborate.
Simon sat opposite her, leaving the page between them.
“What do you need from me at work?” he asked.
“The truth early enough to do something with it. If this is being considered, I need to be in that conversation.”
“All right.”
“And I need you to stop offering me agreement when you mean another day’s grace.”
He glanced up sharply. “I don’t think I’ve offered you much agreement.”
“Enough for me to pretend.”
Outside, a woman in a red coat stopped to look through the glass. She bent, framing the unfinished town with her phone, then saw the two of them and moved on without taking the picture.
Maren pushed her coffee closer. Still warm.
“I’ve made it very difficult to change my mind,” she said. “Not difficult to explain why. Difficult to get near it at all. You can be right about the roof without being right about everything.”
“I would like that framed.”
She almost smiled. He didn’t press the advantage.
“I’m not withdrawing the commission,” he said. “The footprint, the installation, your fee. Those haven’t changed.”
“The fact that you’re allowed to say that is part of this.”
“I know.”
She wasn’t certain he did. He could dislike a meeting and then leave it with the same apartment, the same company and a second team ready to produce an alternative. Her whole autumn was in the room. Her face must have shown some of this, because he shifted back in his chair.
“I don’t want you to have to be grateful that I didn’t make a worse decision.”
“Good.”
“I’m trying to tell you where we stand.”
“Then say where you stand.”
He looked toward the window before answering.
“I want the store to open. I want a display children can actually use. I want it to be the one we’ve made, rather than a picture that looks good while we explain what should have happened.” He drew a breath. “And I want to know whether I can take you to dinner after we argue without it being an attempt to purchase a ceasefire.”
There it was, awkwardly placed among the houses and the measured obligations. She looked down at the hands she had finally brought into her lap.
“I don’t know how to stop being at work with you when we’re in this room.”
“Then let’s leave the room.”
“We haven’t solved it.”
“No. We have established that it needs solving.”
She should have had a sharper answer. Instead she put on her coat.
They walked west without deciding on a destination. The city was busy constructing Christmas around them. A man on a ladder argued with a string of lights above a restaurant door; below him his colleague held a star at an angle that made it look drunk. Maren watched Simon notice it and decide, with visible effort, to keep walking.
“You could have helped,” she said.
“He would have hit me with the star.”
“Quite possibly.”
They reached a park bench in a patch of weak sun. She sat, leaving space, and he took it. He hadn’t touched her since he’d arrived. She had noticed every opportunity he hadn’t taken.
“Willa wants to know if you’re coming on Wednesday,” she said.
“To the show?”
“Yes.”
“I said I was.”
“I know.”
He turned toward her. A gust lifted his hair from his forehead, and she saw his expression change as he understood what she was failing to ask.
“Are you asking because you’d rather I didn’t?”
“No. I want you there.”
“All right.”
“And that frightens me more than wanting you for dinner.”
A little boy ran past dragging a stuffed dog by its lead. His father retrieved the dog, dusted its head and handed it back without breaking stride.
“She likes you now,” Maren said. “Not every minute. She likes you enough to expect you.”
“That’s rather more serious than liking me.”
“Yes.”
He rested his elbows on his knees. “I won’t promise never to disappoint her.”
“I haven’t asked you to.”
“You look as though you might.”
She stared at the path. That was annoying, too: the accuracy of him when she was trying hardest to be reasonable.
“Sometimes I think I should wait until I know,” she said.
“Know what?”
“Whether this is going to last.”
He nodded once, slowly. “And where am I while you’re finding that out?”
“With me.”
“Sometimes. In places you’ve arranged so I can’t be in the way.”
“The weekend was hardly a punishment.”
“No.” His smile came and went. “It was one of the happiest weekends I’ve had in years. I would like another. Tuesday, too. I’d like to know we can have another ordinary evening after a week like this.”
“I meant that invitation.”
“I know. The toast didn’t put me off.” He looked at his hands, then at her. “I don’t want us to go back to seeing each other only when being yourself is too much work.”
She felt the words in her stomach. She had made such a beautiful place for him, in her mind. No missing shoes, no unwashed pan, no child who had been delighted with him yesterday and might dislike him tomorrow because he sat in the wrong chair. A place where she could be the woman he first wanted.
“That woman is me,” she said.
“Yes. So is the one who got cross when I suggested moving a building twelve inches. I’ve been rather involved with her this week.”
She laughed unwillingly. He watched her mouth, and the look hurt in a different, much better way.
“I don’t know what your place in Willa’s life is going to be,” she said.
“Nor do I.”
“I can’t give you a title that makes it certain.”
“I’d be suspicious if you could. We’ve only been doing this properly for a month.”
“Less.”
“An appallingly short time to become so used to someone.”
She looked at him then. Really looked, instead of searching his expression for the decision she most feared.
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
He said it without charm. Her eyes stung, which she found irritating in a public park where somebody was feeding pigeons three feet from her boot.
“I don’t want to stop,” she said.
“Neither do I.”
“I may still be angry at dinner.”
“I was counting on it. You’ll order something good.”
The bench was hard and the sun had gone behind a building. She moved her hand the three inches between them and slid her fingers into his.
They didn’t kiss. For a minute she liked that even more.
They found a small restaurant where the windows had steamed over and the bread arrived with a soft middle that collapsed beneath the knife. Simon took the chair facing the room, realized she had the draft from the door and asked if she wanted to change. She said yes. It was a tiny, unremarkable transaction, and it loosened something between her shoulder blades.
He ordered wine. She took two sips and put it aside because she wanted to be entirely present when she said the next thing.
“On Wednesday, you’re coming as the man I’m seeing. Not to help with the lights or make the show better.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“You weren’t planning to stay out of it either.”
He considered. “Fair.”
“And Blake will be there.”
“I assumed he would.”
They had said Blake’s name in many contexts by then. Tonight it brought no old memory into the space between them. Maren liked the clean fact of that. The man she wanted was opposite her, regarding his menu with absurd seriousness because he had agreed to let her order the starters.
“He and I need to be able to enjoy something she does without watching you to see if you’re hurt,” she said.
“I should hope so.”
“You can say if it feels odd.”
“It feels odd already.” He put down the menu. “I don’t know where to put my face when the two of you have a parent conversation. I don’t want to look as though I’m supervising. Looking away theatrically seems worse.”
Maren pictured it and laughed, fully this time.
“Have some cake. Look at the cake.”
“I can do that.”
“You’re allowed to feel things about it.”
“Thank you. I’m rather inconveniently doing so.”
Their knees touched beneath the table. Neither moved.
When the food came she gave him a piece from her plate, then stole it back because his first expression suggested she had chosen too well to share. He caught her wrist gently, kissed the inside of it and let her take the fork away. It wasn’t an apology. She could have borne an apology less easily.
Later, on the pavement, she reached for the front of his coat and drew him down. His mouth was cold for an instant, then warm, familiar enough now to make her want more instead of surprising her with wanting. A car horn sounded behind them. She kept her fingers in his coat.
“I have to go home,” she said against his mouth.
“I know.”
“Not because we’re finished talking.”
He brushed a wave of black hair away from her cheek. “Call me after she’s asleep. Tell me what you forgot to be angry about.”
She kissed him once more and left him smiling beside the steamed-up window.