The first thing Annelise learned about Malcolm in the morning was that he took too long to decide what to eat.
He stood in front of the open refrigerator wearing sweatpants and the same uncertain expression he had worn over the last question at quiz night. She sat at his table with coffee, her bare feet tucked beneath the chair.
“Do you want me to come back?” she asked.
“I’m considering the options.”
“You’ve named two.”
“Yes. Both strong.”
“Eggs.”
He looked over the door. “You don’t want toast?”
“Those can coexist.”
“That opens things up.”
She laughed and drank her coffee while he took out the carton. The back of his hair was slightly flattened. She had a sudden vivid memory of touching it in the dark and looked down into her cup.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing you need to fix.”
He smiled, slowly, and turned back to the counter.
The rain had stopped before dawn. Through the kitchen window she could see water gathered in the folds of a chair cushion they’d forgotten outside. Malcolm opened the back door and stood on the threshold, assessing it.
“Your garden has acquired a pond.”
“I’ll charge admission.”
He put the cushion on its edge and checked the chilli pots, then returned with damp feet. She passed him the kitchen towel from the radiator. He looked at it, then at her.
“Floor towel now,” she said.
“Good distinction.”
While he cooked, she buttered toast and put plates on the table. He asked whether she minded hot sauce near the eggs rather than on them. She told him to put it wherever he wanted on his own plate. The ordinary exchange gave her a small, startling pleasure. She had known the intensity of being wanted last night. She hadn’t expected to enjoy finding out how he ate breakfast quite so much.
They ate slowly enough that her coffee went cool. Malcolm told her about the office he was measuring, a narrow room with a copier everybody insisted could not move despite its blocking the thing they wanted replaced. She asked how he dealt with that.
“I measure the copier, too.”
“In case it changes its mind?”
“In case the people do.”
She could hear the practicality in it, the experience. She resisted turning it into admiration he hadn’t asked her to announce. Instead she asked whether he liked the measuring part, and he said he liked discovering what was actually possible before everyone became attached to something impossible.
“I like making it more,” he added. “But that’s not the whole job.”
His phone vibrated on the counter. He glanced at the screen, read the message, and set it down again.
“Customer checking noon still works.”
“You said it did?”
“I did.”
The clock showed ten seventeen. She had time to go home, shower, choose clothes, and get to Briar Mill without rushing. Knowing this, she still wanted to delay getting up. He reached across the table and hooked one finger around hers.
“Come here for a minute.”
She did. He drew her onto his lap, carefully enough that the chair didn’t protest, and she put an arm around his shoulders. His face was close to hers, his short beard brushing her cheek.
“This is going to complicate the schedule,” she said.
“Only a minute.”
He kissed her as though he had no intention of keeping to a minute. She made no effort to help him.
Eventually they cleared the table. She dressed in his bedroom while he gathered the things he needed for work. Her toothbrush went back into the small pocket of her bag. She zipped the pocket closed, already wanting to bring the bag back.
At the front door, she turned toward him.
“I had a very good time.”
“So did I.”
“That sounds inadequate.”
“It does.”
His hand moved to the back of her neck, where it had rested on Thursday while she untied his shoe. He kissed her again, and when she stepped away she was smiling so openly that she was glad the street was empty.
“Good luck with the copier.”
“Good luck with the seating plan.”
She lifted her bag in farewell and went to the car.
At home she found the damp pillowcase exactly where she’d left it. It was dry now. She folded it, put her bag away, and stood in the quiet bedroom for a moment before showering. Her own room did not feel abandoned or diminished because she had slept somewhere else. It contained the work pants she’d hung up, the book she was halfway through, the lamp she’d chosen for its ugly, useful light.
She liked coming back to it. She liked that she would leave it again.
By two o’clock she was at her mother’s door with a packet of cookies she’d bought at the shop on the way. Maribel took them with the distracted gratitude of a person who had already put out too much food.
“You look well,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“I mean—”
“I know what you mean.” Annelise kissed her cheek. “Where is everybody?”
“In the dining room. Hugo’s brought his computer.”
“Then I won’t interrupt the ceremony.”
The table was covered with a laptop, a notebook, a cloth napkin in the wrong shade of blue, and a plate of sandwiches. Cecily had taken her shoes off. Hugo was staring at his screen with a pencil held between his teeth.
“Before anybody says anything,” he said, removing it, “we’re keeping the aisle clear.”
“I didn’t say we weren’t,” Maribel said.
“You suggested putting the favor table in it.”
“At the end.”
“Which is where people would need to get out.”
Annelise put her bag on an empty chair. “I’m glad I arrived for the dramatic part.”
Cecily pushed the sandwiches toward her. “Eat. It gives you something to do while we debate furniture.”
They spent twenty minutes deciding three things that should have taken five. Annelise found herself reaching for the pencil twice, then stopped. Hugo knew the dimensions of the hall. Cecily knew which traditions she wanted and which she was willing to tolerate. Her mother knew where the extra napkins were. None of these facts required Annelise to take charge.
When Maribel proposed a receiving line, Cecily shook her head.
“We’d spend the entire afternoon standing still.”
“People like to congratulate you.”
“They can congratulate us while we’re moving.”
Hugo nodded. “We’ve already agreed on this.”
Maribel looked to Annelise, who took a sandwich.
“I believe them,” she said.
Her mother gave her a small, reproachful look, then wrote something in the notebook. No one was wounded beyond recovery. The receiving line remained rejected.
The next difficulty was music. Maribel had found a list of songs people apparently ought to play while guests arrived, and Hugo wanted to know why there were twelve of them.
“How early are these guests coming?” he asked.
“It’s nice to have enough.”
“It’s almost an hour.”
“People don’t have to hear the whole list.”
Cecily looked over his shoulder. “No. Not that one.”
“Which?” Maribel asked.
“The third.”
“But it’s lovely.”
“I know. It was lovely at three other weddings, and I don’t want it at mine.”
Annelise expected Hugo to agree. Instead he said, “I like that one.”
Cecily turned toward him. “Since when?”
“Since before I met you. I contain surprises.”
“Apparently.”
For a moment they looked at each other over the laptop, each surprised by a preference that had somehow escaped discovery. Annelise recognized the opening for a compromise and had one ready: play it during dinner, choose something else for the entrance. She waited.
“Is it important?” Cecily asked.
“Not important. I like it.”
“I really don’t.”
Hugo considered, then nodded. “All right. But I want the one we heard at the outdoor concert.”
“The one with the terrible introduction?”
“The introduction is nineteen seconds.”
“You timed it?”
“I anticipated resistance.”
Cecily laughed, and Annelise watched the disagreement change shape without either pretending it had never happened.
“Play it,” her sister said.
Hugo found the song on his phone and held it between them. The opening was indeed terrible, an overconfident flourish followed by a silence long enough to make Annelise think the connection had failed. Then the tune began, warm and uncomplicated. Cecily’s expression softened despite her obvious determination not to let Hugo see it too soon.
“There,” he said.
“I can hear it.”
“You like it.”
“I like most of it.”
“We’re getting married in nineteen days. I accept most.”
“Twenty,” Annelise said automatically.
Three faces turned toward her. She covered her mouth.
“Sorry. Occupational hazard.”
Hugo checked the date and laughed. “An extra day. Excellent. We can use it to discuss the introduction.”
Maribel wrote the song down, crossing out the one Cecily had rejected. Annelise saw her sister rest a hand briefly on Hugo’s shoulder while he put the phone away. The gesture was familiar between them, easy enough not to need an audience. She realized she had seen very little of the way they made decisions when nobody was asking them to pose as a happy couple.
“Can you send me that?” she asked Hugo.
“The song?”
“Yes. I like the part after the terrible beginning.”
He sent a link while Cecily warned him not to interpret this as a victory. Annelise saved it to listen to later. The song wasn’t hers, but the small argument had given her something true about her sister that she hadn’t known when she arrived.
After they had settled the order of the readings, Cecily turned her chair toward Annelise.
“I wanted to ask you something.”
“Yes?”
“Would you say a few words at the reception?”
Annelise set down her glass.
“Not a great enormous speech,” Cecily added. “A minute or two. Hugo’s friend is saying something, and I’d like you to.”
“Oh.”
“You can say no.”
“I don’t want to say no.” She looked from her sister to Hugo. “I just hadn’t thought about it.”
“Neither had I until somebody asked who was speaking,” Cecily said. “Which is how a lot of this wedding has been organized.”
“I’d be glad to.”
“Thank you.”
Hugo smiled. “Two minutes is genuinely fine. We don’t need a history of either family.”
“Especially mine,” Cecily said.
Maribel lifted her head. “What’s wrong with our history?”
“Nothing. It’s simply longer than two minutes.”
Annelise laughed with them, but something had already tightened under her ribs. Being asked to speak felt different from being asked to arrange. She could calculate chairs, check names, arrive early. A speech required her to offer an account of what she knew and why she belonged beside her sister on that day.
She wanted to be good at it.
While Maribel went to make tea, Hugo showed Cecily a message from the hall. They bent over the laptop together, arguing mildly about whether a particular word meant what the coordinator thought it meant. Annelise opened a note on her phone.
Cecily has always known her own mind.
She deleted always. At six her sister had changed her mind about breakfast three times in a single morning. That was not the point, but it was the first thing Annelise thought of.
When Cecily was little—
She stopped. Everybody had been little. She could give the room a funny story, perhaps one involving borrowed shoes or a catastrophic school costume, and people would recognize the shape of it even if they recognized nothing about Cecily.
She wrote two more lines anyway.
Hugo went to help Maribel carry the tea. Cecily leaned toward her.
“What are you doing?”
“Starting.”
“Already?”
“If I don’t, I’ll leave it until the night before.”
“You won’t.”
Annelise smiled without denying it. “Listen to this. ‘My sister and I have always been close, even when life has taken us in different directions.’”
Cecily’s expression changed very slightly.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Cecily.”
“That’s the sort of thing people say.”
“Yes. In speeches.”
“I know.” Her sister picked at the corner of the paper napkin beneath her cup. “Can you make it sound more like you?”
Annelise looked at the line. She could hear the objection and still felt an unreasonable impulse to defend it. It was gracious. It would reassure their mother. It did not contain the years when phone calls had been brief and visits infrequent, when being six years older had become an excuse for not knowing what her sister’s life looked like.
“I’ve only just started,” she said.
“I know that, too.”
Hugo returned with the teapot. The conversation moved on. Annelise turned her phone facedown, but the sentence remained in her mind, smooth and difficult to hold.
They finished at four. She helped carry cups to the kitchen because there were cups to carry, then collected her bag. Maribel hugged her at the door and said she was glad she’d come. Annelise believed her. Outside, Cecily stood beside the car, searching for something in her own bag while Hugo waited at the passenger side.
“I’ll work on it,” Annelise said.
Her sister found her keys. “Don’t work too hard.”
“You’ve met me.”
“Yes,” Cecily said. “That’s why I’m asking.”
At home, Annelise reopened the note. She changed the first line, added a second, then inserted a sentence about sisters telling each other everything. It sounded convincing in her head. She read it aloud and heard how easily it passed her mouth.
Her phone buzzed. Cecily had sent a picture of the rejected blue napkin lying beside Hugo’s shoe. Beneath it was a message.
Thank you for doing the speech. Really.
Annelise answered with a heart, then hesitated and typed, I’ll make it good.
The reply came while she was still holding the phone.
Don’t make us sound like strangers.