Malcolm opened the door before she could knock a second time. He was barefoot, wearing a faded green shirt, and the sight of his feet did something unreasonable to Annelise’s concentration.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
His eyes dropped to the canvas bag in her hand, then came back to her face. The smile that followed was neither discreet nor helpful.
“I brought a toothbrush.”
“I was hoping.”
He kissed her on the step. She had meant to kiss him politely, as a person might on arrival at an unfamiliar house, but his hand settled behind her ear and she forgot that intention. By the time she remembered the bottle she was carrying in the other hand, its neck was pressed against his ribs.
“Sorry.”
“Worth it. Come in. Mind the step.”
The entrance opened directly into a sitting room. A lamp stood beside a worn blue chair; a book lay facedown on the chair’s arm, its spine already too damaged for her to blame him. There were shelves, a low table, a rug that had slipped crookedly toward the window. Beyond an archway she could see the kitchen and a small back garden.
It was an ordinary room, unmistakably inhabited by someone she had not lived beside for seventeen years. She had imagined this moment often enough to expect pain from that fact. Instead she felt curiosity so sharp it was nearly hunger.
“Where should I put this?” She lifted the bag.
“I’ll show you.”
The bedroom was at the back of the house. He left her bag on a chair and showed her the bathroom across the short hall. There was a clean towel on a hook, another folded on the shelf. She appreciated the preparation and did not know how to say so without making the towel sound ceremonial.
“That drawer sticks,” he said, pointing to the vanity. “I’ve been meaning to fix it.”
“A professional scandal.”
“Please don’t tell Tobin.”
She slid it open an inch. It stopped abruptly.
“Oh, that’s impressively bad.”
“I have other qualities.”
She turned toward him in the narrow doorway. “I’m beginning to suspect.”
He touched her waist, looking at her with a warmth that made it difficult to keep hold of the joke. For a moment neither moved. Then something hissed in the kitchen.
“The oven,” he said.
“The house has saved you.”
“For now.”
She followed him back and set the bottle on the counter. He had prepared chicken with lemon and a tray of vegetables. A bowl of washed salad leaves stood beside the sink. No elaborate effort concealed beneath claims of effortlessness, no anxious restaurant performance; she could see the chopping board and the discarded ends in a small compost container.
“Can I do anything?”
“Take that outside with me.” He nodded at the bottle. “Food needs another twenty minutes.”
The back garden was small, with a paved strip, a patch of grass, and several pots arranged in the sunniest corner. Two held chillies. One plant had a single red fruit hanging from it like an accusation.
She stopped beside it. “This is the famous crop?”
“Don’t be rude. The season has been challenging.”
“To whom?”
“To me, specifically.”
There were other fruits, tiny green ones concealed among the leaves. She bent to look and felt his hand settle lightly at her lower back. He told her he’d put the pots out too early, then watered them too much, then become so determined not to overwater them that he’d almost finished the job in the opposite direction.
“You could buy chillies.”
“Yes, but then what would I become disproportionately involved with every morning?”
She straightened and looked at him. “We must protect the disproportion.”
He smiled and pulled out a chair for himself, leaving her to choose between the other two. She sat facing the plants. The light was low enough to catch the fine hairs along his forearm when he poured their drinks.
“Do you spend much time out here?”
“When it’s warm. Sometimes when it isn’t.”
“Reading?”
“Sometimes. Mostly staring at the fence and avoiding things.”
“What things?”
“Currently the bathroom drawer.”
She laughed, then sat quietly with him. Somewhere behind the neighboring fence a radio was playing low. The garden held the day’s warmth in its paving. She had arrived braced for the force of their past and found herself interested instead in which chair he preferred and whether the fence caught the wind.
After a few minutes, he went inside to check the oven and returned with a camera.
“You asked about the photographs,” he said. “I haven’t put the latest ones anywhere yet.”
She moved her chair closer while he found the first image. He put on the reading glasses that had been tucked into his shirt and held the screen where both of them could see it.
A drainpipe cast a bent shadow over pale brick. In the next image, rain had collected on the roof of a bus shelter, the reflected traffic light making a small red square in the water. Then a row of washing machines in an empty laundromat, one round door standing open.
“That one’s good,” she said.
“You sound surprised.”
“I like that one open door. It changes all the circles.”
He looked at the screen again, pleased by the particular answer. “That’s why I stopped.”
“Do you ask to take them?”
“If somebody owns the place and I’m going inside. That was through the window. I was waiting for takeout.”
She leaned closer. “You can see your reflection.”
“I know. That annoys me.”
“I like it.”
“You don’t have to like the mistake.”
“I like the man holding up a camera outside a laundromat while his food gets cold.”
“My food was perfectly warm.”
“Important correction.”
He turned the camera toward himself and studied the reflection. She watched him rather than the image. With his glasses on, head tilted, he looked unexpectedly serious, almost stern. Then he pushed them up his nose with one finger, and the gesture made her want to touch him.
She put her hand on his arm. He stopped scrolling.
“Nothing,” she said when he looked at her. “Just that.”
His hand closed over hers for a moment.
“Do you print them?” she asked.
“Some. Most sit on a hard drive and wait for me to become organized.”
“You could put that one up.” She pointed to the laundromat.
“I could.”
“Would it annoy you, seeing the reflection?”
“Possibly.” He looked at it again. “I might keep it anyway.”
He turned the camera off, took off his glasses, and set both safely on the table. She was sorry to lose the warmth of his shoulder beside hers, then pleased when he remained where he was.
“Did you know you’d stay in this house?” she asked.
“When I bought it?”
“Yes.”
“I hoped I would. The first winter I questioned the decision quite a lot. The windows were terrible.”
“These ones?”
“Replaced them. Eventually.”
She looked toward the back door, its glass reflecting the garden. There was a narrow strip of darker paint beside the frame, a repair she’d barely noticed.
“I keep thinking I should know more about your life,” she said.
“You can ask.”
“I know. I don’t want to spend the whole evening conducting an interview.”
“Good. I’m bad at interviews.”
She smiled. “What would you ask me?”
He considered, looking at her with enough seriousness to make her nervous.
“Whether you want the last of this drink.”
She laughed. “Yes.”
“Excellent. One mystery solved.”
He poured, then reached for her empty hand. She let him turn it palm up on his knee. The touch was idle, almost absent, but her attention narrowed to it immediately.
“There will be things we don’t know,” he said. “For a while.”
“Yes.”
“I’m interested in finding them out. I don’t need all of them before dinner.”
She leaned closer and touched his face. His glasses had left a shallow mark at his temple. Her thumb passed over it, and he closed his eyes briefly. Then he turned his head and kissed the inside of her wrist.
The oven timer sounded through the open door. She laughed first, though she didn’t move her hand away immediately.
“Your chicken is very persistent.”
“It’s had time to develop character.”
He took the camera and his reading glasses inside with him, leaving her to carry the glasses.
They ate at the small kitchen table. He gave her the crispest potatoes without comment; she noticed and exchanged one for a piece of chicken because she wanted him to have some, too. Talk moved through her working week and his Sunday plans. He had a noon appointment at a customer’s empty office to measure a replacement unit while the room was available.
“On Sunday?”
“They can’t stop using it during the week. I agreed to it before—” He gestured between them, then grinned at himself. “Before I knew how I’d rather spend tomorrow.”
“I have to leave for Mom’s anyway. Two o’clock meeting.”
“We’ll have breakfast first.”
“Yes.”
She liked knowing. There would be no need in the morning to read a glance at the clock as a verdict on tonight.
After dinner, he washed and she dried. She could have sat with her drink while he finished; he had told her so. She preferred to stand beside him, receiving warm plates, learning where things went. The cabinet nearest the stove held mugs, the next one plates. She opened the wrong one and found three mismatched storage lids stacked on a tin.
“Not there,” he said.
“I have this cupboard, too.”
“Everybody does. Some people lie about it.”
The last plate slipped slightly in her wet hand. He caught its edge, and for a moment they both held it between them. His eyes lifted to hers. The interruption was so small that she might have laughed, but the laughter didn’t come.
She put the plate on the counter.
“Can we leave the rest?”
“Yes.”
He dried his hands carefully. She watched him do it, absurdly moved by the care, the way he did not rush toward her and did not make her wait to prove something. Then he stepped close and kissed her.
This was different from the step outside. There was time in it. His mouth moved against hers, and she felt the solid warmth of him through the green shirt. She put both hands at his back. He drew away only far enough to look at her.
“Still what you want?”
“Yes.” She touched his jaw. “Don’t make me be the only one saying it.”
“I want you here.” His voice was low. “I’ve been trying not to stare at you all evening.”
“Was that trying?”
“Apparently I need practice.”
She kissed him again, smiling this time, and the smile disappeared into something deeper. When they moved out of the kitchen, she caught her sock against the edge of the rug and stumbled. He steadied her. They stood together laughing in the doorway, her forehead against his chest, all the grand tension interrupted by a rug.
“I may have misrepresented my elegance,” she said.
“I saw you get out of a folding chair in 2011. I came into this informed.”
She looked up sharply, still smiling. The date might have pulled them backward. Instead he touched her cheek and said, “You all right?”
“Yes.”
In the bedroom, with the lamp on, she became self-conscious again. There was no single cause. Her body had changed since he last knew it. So had his. They had both lived years in which the other had no place, and now she was standing in his room wanting him to look at her while wishing she could choose the first thing he saw.
“I know this is silly,” she began.
“Then you don’t have to start that way.”
She took a breath. “I keep thinking you’ll remember me differently.”
“I do remember you differently.”
The answer caught her before she could protect herself from it. He stepped closer.
“You were twenty-one,” he said. “I was twenty-three. I’m not trying to get us back there.”
“I don’t want to go back, either.”
“Good.” He touched the loose hair at her temple. “My knee makes a noise now. It’s very disillusioning.”
A laugh escaped her. “Which one?”
“Don’t encourage it.”
She put her arms around him. There was nothing abstract in how much she wanted him. It was this man, his familiar voice changed by time, his present hands, the little crease between his brows when he was paying attention. She reached for the lamp, then stopped.
“Leave it?” he asked.
“For a little while.”
“All right.”
They had practical things to say, and said them without either pretending practicalities could spoil what they wanted. When he kissed her again, the nervousness did not vanish. It became one feeling among others. She let him see her; she looked at him. Later, she closed the bedroom door herself.
Outside, the last of the evening light left the garden.
She woke briefly to the sound of rain. The room was dark except for a faint glow beyond the curtains. For a second she did not know where the window was. Then Malcolm moved beside her and she remembered with a pleasure so immediate she smiled into the pillow.
“You awake?” he murmured.
“A little.”
“Cold?”
“No.”
He found her hand under the cover. She shifted closer, the cotton of her sleep shirt soft against her skin. She had put it on without apology. He had pulled her back toward him as soon as she came out of the bathroom.
Now his thumb brushed the side of her finger. The rain strengthened, ticking against something outside.
“Your chillies,” she whispered.
“What about them?”
“Too much water.”
He made a distressed sound that was almost convincing. She laughed against his shoulder, and he turned toward her, his arm settling around her waist.
“Tomorrow,” he said.
For tonight, she stayed exactly where she was.