2 January 2027
The angel refused to fit in the box unless somebody took off her wings.
“She’s not an angel without them,” Willa said.
“She’s an angel on holiday,” Simon said.
“That isn’t a thing.”
“I stand corrected.”
Maren sat on the floor with a length of silver ribbon caught around her wrist. The tree was bare except for one paper star they couldn’t reach without moving the chair, and the room looked unexpectedly large around it. Her daughter had taken possession of the decoration box and was arranging its contents according to rules that changed whenever an adult understood them.
Simon held the angel over the box, waiting for instructions. He wore the gray sweater he’d left in Maren’s drawer and socks Willa had already declared unsuitable for January because they had trees on them. His hair was flattened at the back, and there was a glittering speck above his left eyebrow.
“Sideways,” Maren suggested.
Willa tried it. The wings bent a little but remained attached.
“All right. Like that.”
Simon lowered the angel with the concentration he usually gave a difficult join. Maren reached up and brushed the glitter from his eyebrow. It stayed on her finger.
“There’s no point,” he said. “I’ve decided it’s part of me.”
“You’ll be very popular in meetings.”
She wound the ribbon around its card. The room smelled of coffee and the last dry needles from the tree. On the table her January drawings waited beside the train information she had printed for Boston. Three short visits no longer seemed like one enormous act of leaving. The first was on Wednesday, and she still had to decide which model would survive the journey most comfortably.
Her work bag stood beside the coat cupboard. Simon’s small overnight bag, acquired after the first large one’s disgrace, fitted neatly beneath the bench. Neither impeded the door.
Willa abandoned the box and fetched the wooden toy he had made her for Christmas. It was a small sliding stage, not polished like the shop’s products, with interchangeable flat pieces that could make a hill, a wall or something nobody had named yet. She had removed the moon by the second day and used it as a dinner plate for the cat. The curtain was gone too. Maren had seen Simon notice both alterations and say nothing until Willa asked him to help make the stage opening larger.
Now she had a different demand.
“This needs to come off.”
She pointed at the lower painted strip.
Simon set the angel’s empty wrapping beside the box. “Can you show me why?”
Willa laid the stage on the floor and took out the little pieces she’d made from thick card. A spoon princess was too big for it, but she’d drawn a smaller one with the same terrible crown. The princess could move across the stage, but not directly out toward the person watching.
“She has to come here.”
“Onto the floor?”
“Yes. That’s the sea.”
“I see.”
Maren leaned back against the sofa and watched him inspect the strip. He didn’t tell Willa how a theater usually worked. Nor did he agree instantly and snap a part off because she wanted it.
“That holds these two sides straight,” he said. “If we take it off, the whole thing may lean.”
“It can lean.”
“A bit. But not fall over. Shall we try moving it to the back?”
Willa considered. “Then the boat can go under.”
“Exactly.”
He reached for his bag of small tools and stopped, looking at Maren.
“The rug?”
She gave him the old cutting mat from beneath the table. He took it, smiling at the permission she’d actually been asked to give, and spread it on the floor. Willa sat close enough to inspect his hands but far enough not to interfere. For nearly a minute nobody spoke.
Maren finished the ribbon. The card slid into the box, tucked below the angel’s wings. She didn’t get up to direct the repair, though she could see another way to brace the stage. Simon had found his own, and Willa was asking whether the little princess could have a staircase to the sea.
“Not in the sea,” he said. “Down to it.”
“She goes in.”
“Then in the sea.”
The phone rang on the table.
“Blake,” Maren said.
Willa glanced up. “Tell him I’m making something.”
“You can tell him yourself.”
She answered, heard his greeting and passed the phone down. Willa held it between shoulder and ear for three seconds before discovering that this was difficult and giving up her work to hold it properly.
She told him about the stage, corrected his idea that the princess needed a swimsuit and asked whether they were still going to the park tomorrow. They were. He’d found the cafe with the plain sandwiches. She asked for cheese.
The call returned to Maren. They confirmed eleven, the same meeting place and an earlier return if it became too cold. His voice was ordinary, without the careful brightness of those first weeks. She wished him a happy new year, received the same wish and ended the call.
On the floor the painted strip came free. Willa held it up, delighted. Simon checked the two remaining sides, then moved his tools back onto the mat.
“Try it.”
She sent the princess out through the new opening and onto the rug. Halfway to the sea, the little paper figure fell flat.
“She drowned,” Willa said, without concern.
“A short performance,” Simon observed.
“No. The cat rescues her.”
She fetched the cat. Simon sat back on his heels and looked up at Maren, who smiled at the glitter now caught in his hair.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“Please.”
She rose, stretching her stiff knees, and went to the kitchen. Two cups stood ready by the kettle, one of his ordinary habits now: he set them out before getting drawn into whatever Willa was doing. Maren made coffee while he fitted the strip at the back of the stage. She could hear him asking whether the new position left enough room, then Willa testing the opening instead of answering.
The kettle rattled. Nobody complained.
When Maren came back, the princess had survived and the cat was charging admission to the sea. She put Simon’s cup on the table out of the reach of the small, busy feet.
“I need your opinion,” she said.
He looked up immediately. “About?”
“The model. For Boston.”
“An actual professional opinion?”
“Try to contain yourself.”
He grinned and stood. Willa kept the mat, turning it into a harbor, and pushed his closed tool bag toward the sofa. He left it there and came to the table.
Maren had two small versions of the new commission’s central space. One had more complete scenery; the other traveled in three separate pieces. She showed him how the second could be packed, waited while he considered and watched him choose the one she had hoped he would.
“Because it travels?” she asked.
“Because you can show them more while you’re there.”
“Good.”
“Had you already decided?”
“Yes.”
“I’m delighted to have been consulted.”
She laughed, then showed him the part she wasn’t sure of. He looked carefully, asked one question she needed to answer and didn’t touch anything until she moved the nearest piece aside.
Below them, the princess demanded a bigger boat. The radiator clicked. Outside the window a truck passed carrying a load of discarded trees, green branches pressed against its mesh sides. Maren watched it go, then turned back to the drawings.
“I’ll call Wednesday evening,” she said.
“I’ll answer.”
“You may regret that. There will be a lot about doorways.”
“I’ve developed an interest.”
He lifted his coffee. His left hand rested on the table beside her notes, a small nick at one knuckle from the stage repair. She remembered the first time she’d wanted to kiss a little cut on his hand and decided not to be sensible about it now.
She took his hand, turned it over and kissed the knuckle.
His cup stopped halfway to his mouth.
“What was that for?”
She kept his hand in hers. There was no large occasion available. Christmas had gone into the box. Her daughter wanted a boat, the museum wanted her in Boston and the man beside her had to leave for his own apartment later to find a shirt he’d been looking for since Thursday.
“I like you here.”
“I like being here.”
He put down his cup and moved close. She could have told him that she loved him. She had said it yesterday and would say it again, quite possibly before the afternoon was over. For now she wanted his mouth.
She rose onto her toes and kissed him, one hand against the soft gray sweater. His arm came around her. Behind them Willa began a fierce argument in two puppet voices, too occupied to object.
Maren smiled against his lips. The unfinished town stayed on the table, waiting while she kissed him again.