25–26 November 2026
The bag Willa packed for Thanksgiving contained a book, a stone, one sock and no puppet.
“You don’t need a bag for an afternoon,” Maren said.
“I might.”
“Then perhaps two socks.”
“It’s for the cat.”
Maren took her hand away from the bag. The cat puppet had acquired the sock as a sleeping bag, apparently, and the stone had something to do with keeping its hat flat. Willa had explained this once, and expected her audience to retain the details.
Her daughter sat cross-legged on the bed, working out whether to take the sketchbook Simon had given her. In the kitchen the pie Maren had bought that afternoon waited in its box, and her phone held two messages about tomorrow’s final work check. She left all three things waiting.
“Blake said Joanna makes sweet potatoes with sugar.”
“Yes?”
“On purpose.”
“Some people like them.”
“Do I have to?”
“No.”
Willa considered the reassuring limits of this arrangement. She had chosen the short visit after Blake explained what he and Joanna were doing for Thanksgiving. Maren had made sure she understood that she’d come home before bedtime, and that she could call. Then she had managed not to offer a more exciting competing afternoon.
She sat on the bed, keeping the bag between them.
“You can have a good time.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
“Will you have pie without me?”
“I might have a piece. I’ll save you some.”
“The middle.”
“That’s difficult to cut separately.”
“Try.”
Maren laughed. Willa put the sketchbook in her bag and zipped it with the air of somebody whose essential travel arrangements were now complete.
On Thursday morning Maren worked for ninety minutes at the store. The last painted sections of the new arrangement were drying; staff had practiced letting separate stories continue rather than gathering every piece back into the square. She checked the two paths, looked at the credit panel and left it where the team had fixed it. Her name was spelled correctly. So was Anika’s. There would be time to look again tomorrow.
Simon stood at the entrance, coat over his arm. He had a family call to make, then an hour at home before coming to Brooklyn. His light-brown hair was damp from the cold mist outside.
“Are we finished?” he asked.
“For today.”
“An extraordinary phrase.”
She smiled. “Try using it.”
He held the door for her, then walked beside her to the corner. They kissed there, a quick kiss that became two because he caught her hand when she began to turn away.
“See you later.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t ask if she would be all right. She loved him for it for a dangerous, startling second, then put the word away because there was a train to catch and a child to help into her coat.
Blake came at two. He had checked the time rather than appearing early with an alternative plan. Willa made him wait while she returned to the bedroom for the cat puppet after all.
“There’s a bag?” he asked Maren quietly.
“A small one.”
He nodded, as if the bag was useful information about the scale of the occasion. They confirmed six thirty for the return. He said the traffic might be slow but he’d allow for it. There was no reason to stand in the doorway after that, yet Maren found one: Willa’s collar was caught beneath her scarf.
Her daughter let her fix it, then pulled away.
“I’m hot.”
“It’s cold outside.”
“I know.”
Maren kissed her cheek. Willa kissed her back without much attention, already looking toward Blake, who was holding the bag correctly by both handles so the hat wouldn’t tip.
“Bye, Mum.”
“Have fun.”
She closed the door after they turned onto the next flight. The apartment became quiet in the ordinary way it did when her daughter was at school. She had not expected the same quiet to feel so different because somebody else was being looked for at the bottom of the stairs.
She tidied the shoe cupboard, moved a coat and checked the time. Seven minutes had passed.
Then she put on music.
Simon arrived with cream for the pie and a packet of crackers he said were not festive crackers, although he could see how the confusion might arise. Maren opened the packet and found small, savory biscuits.
“They’re just crackers.”
“Yes. I was having a very British moment in the shop.”
“Did you recover?”
“Not entirely.”
She kissed him as he took off his coat, lingering until the cold left his mouth. His hand came to her back. She stood against him with the music playing and the unlocked afternoon spreading around them. It was strange to want comfort and pleasure at once, and find both in the same coat-wearing man.
He washed his hands. She found plates. They warmed the small dish she had made for their late lunch, ate at the kitchen table and disputed whether the crackers improved the cheese or the cheese rescued the crackers. He told her about his family call, including his inability to make the camera point in a direction that satisfied anyone. She told him Willa had packed a stone.
“A sensible precaution.”
“Against what?”
“An inadequate supply of stones.”
She laughed. It was the first time since two o’clock that she had forgotten to hear whether her phone had vibrated.
When it rang she reached so quickly that Simon stopped mid-sentence. Willa’s voice arrived tangled with laughter.
“The cat fell in.”
“Hello to you too. In what?”
“Not real fell in. The gravy. Not real gravy.”
“I’m relieved.”
Blake said something in the background. Willa answered him, then came back to the phone.
“Joanna has a dish with a duck on it, but she says it’s a goose. It doesn’t look like a goose.”
“Perhaps you can draw it for me.”
“I already did.”
She described the table, the goose, the sweet potatoes she had tried and would not be trying again. She wanted Maren to know how funny the cat had been and didn’t need her to fix anything. Halfway through the account someone asked whether she’d like more water. She said yes, distractedly, exactly as she did at home.
Maren’s throat tightened.
“Sounds lovely, sweetheart.”
“Can I go now? We’re doing the hat.”
“Yes. I’ll see you later.”
“Bye.”
The call ended. She kept the phone against her ear for a second, hearing nothing.
Simon was cutting the pie with a knife that was too small. His first slice had collapsed sideways, shedding fruit onto the plate. He looked up when she set the phone down.
“Good?”
“Very.”
She smiled. It held until she saw how carefully he was trying not to watch her.
“I’m pleased,” she said.
“I heard.”
“And it hurts a little. I don’t want it to. She was laughing.”
He put the knife down.
Maren pressed her fingertips beneath her eyes, impatient with the tears. “Don’t be especially nice. I’ll become unbearable.”
“Right.”
He handed her the less ruined slice of pie. She laughed in spite of herself and took it. They sat beside each other, eating while the music chose a song with an entirely inappropriate level of cheer.
After a few minutes she leaned her shoulder against his. He leaned back, neither holding her still nor making her look at him. She loved him then in a quieter, more inconvenient way than she had at the corner that morning. The word didn’t go away when she tried to put it down.
Willa returned at six twenty-eight, indignant because Blake had suggested the puppet cat might keep its hat on overnight.
“It gets hot.”
“Of course,” Maren said.
“She said that too,” Blake told her. “I thought the felt would be warm.”
“It isn’t felt,” Willa said, and carried her bag into the bedroom before anybody could damage the cat’s reputation further.
Blake stayed in the doorway. Simon was in the kitchen with the plates, visible from the hall but giving the return room to happen.
“Good afternoon?” Maren asked.
“Yes. I think so.” Blake looked toward the bedroom. “She wanted to come home at six. We left when she said.”
“Thank you.”
“We can talk about another visit after the opening. No rush tonight.”
She nodded. He called goodbye, received a muffled answer and went downstairs. Maren listened only until the outer door closed, then went to look at the goose drawing her daughter was holding up.
Willa was tired enough to cry over a folded corner of the paper. She was hungry again but didn’t want supper, then ate most of the remaining chicken while insisting she had already eaten. Simon listened to a detailed explanation of the gravy game and was told he could not play it because there weren’t enough places. He accepted the ruling and fetched the water she had forgotten.
Maren put her to bed at the usual time. Halfway through the story Willa asked whether she had saved the middle of the pie.
“Some of it.”
“For tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
Her eyes closed before the chapter ended. Maren sat for another minute, looking at the round cheek against the pillow and the blue clip Willa had forgotten to take out. She slipped it free and set it beside the book.
When she came back, Simon had two cups of tea and his coat over the chair. He was staying to drink them, plainly willing to leave afterward if that was what the evening became.
She took her cup, put it down again and went to him.
“I love you,” she said.
His hand stopped on the back of the chair.
For a second she could hear the old refrigerator, a car outside, the impossible amount of waiting inside a very small silence. She didn’t take the words back or supply a helpful explanation.
Then he touched her face.
“I love you,” he said. “I’ve been trying to find a sensible moment.”
“There may not be one.”
“I’m beginning to suspect.”
She laughed, and he kissed her, his other hand warm against her back. She held him hard enough to make him breathe in, not frightened by the force of it now that she’d finally given it a name.
When he lifted his head, she kept her hands on his shoulders.
“I want you here when it isn’t Christmas.”
“I want that too. The days when none of it looks particularly enchanting.”
“My kettle has already auditioned for those.”
“With distinction.”
She smiled and kissed him again. The launch was tomorrow. Boston had not yet been formally accepted. There was no success she could put in front of him to explain why he should stay, and for once she didn’t search for one.
“Stay tonight.”
“Yes.”
They sat on the sofa with the tea cooling on the table, her feet tucked beneath his leg. He told her he wanted to spend Christmas Day with them if she wanted him; she said she did, and that she intended to cook too much and complain about it. He offered to be responsible for breakfast, an undertaking whose scale she suspected he hadn’t fully appreciated.
“The first Boston visit is in January,” she said. “Two nights. I need to make the arrangements properly.”
“I know.”
“When I’m back, can I come to yours for supper?”
His hand moved through her hair, slow and certain.
“Come to mine when you’re back. Call when you’re there. Tell me all the things you can’t stop thinking about.”
She leaned into him. In the bedroom Willa turned over with a small thump against the wall. Simon paused, and Maren waited with him. The child settled.
“Now,” she whispered, “you can kiss me again.”
He did, and the whole ordinary apartment seemed to draw close around them.