At ten past four on Tuesday, Annelise discovered that an entire department had submitted overtime in the wrong column.
At twelve past four, she received a message from Malcolm that said, I keep thinking about Sunday.
The two events required very different responses. She gave the overtime five responsible minutes and then picked up her phone.
So do I.
She considered adding something about the kiss, decided that was clearly what they meant, then disliked her own assumption that clarity would spoil anything.
Especially the last part.
His reply was immediate.
The dessert?
She smiled at her desk.
Obviously.
A colleague appeared at the partition holding a printout. Annelise put down the phone and turned her chair.
“Is this the overtime?”
“Yes. I don’t understand why it didn’t import.”
“Because these are comments, not hours.”
The colleague looked at the page as though it had changed out of spite. Annelise showed him the correct column, explained how to move the entries without losing the notes, and asked him to send the corrected file by four forty-five.
“I can just tell you the totals.”
“I need the source corrected.”
“It’ll take a while.”
“Then start now.”
He looked at her, and she softened her voice without changing the request.
“I can check it when it comes back. But I can’t guess what everyone meant.”
He left. She returned to her own screen, completed the checks she could complete, and resisted opening her phone again until the file arrived.
It came at four thirty-eight, corrected. By five ten she had finished, sent the confirmation, and closed her laptop. Nobody applauded. Nobody needed to. People would be paid accurately, and she could leave.
In the parking lot, she listened to a message from Cecily.
“Nothing urgent. Call when you’ve got a minute. And I mean a minute, not a project.”
Annelise called before starting the car.
“That’s an encouraging introduction,” she said when her sister answered.
“I’ve learned to set expectations.”
“What do you need?”
“Would you help with the readings and reception cards? Not writing anything. Just checking the two readers have the final versions and putting the little cards at the right places on the morning.”
“Which cards?”
“The ones explaining the guest book and where the photographs go. Two signs. Three if Hugo remembers the thing he’s supposedly making.”
“What’s he making?”
“A sign asking people not to move the chairs from the courtyard. He thinks a polite sign will achieve what three conversations with his cousins haven’t.”
“Optimistic.”
“It’s one of his qualities.”
Annelise leaned against the car. Her first impulse was to ask for every document, review the whole ceremony, and establish a sequence. She could feel the familiar relief of becoming necessary waiting just beyond the questions.
“I can check the readings and place the cards,” she said. “Send me the final files and the names of the two people. I can do that.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll need somebody else to handle any changes on the morning. I don’t want to spend the whole time chasing the printer.”
“Agreed. If something changes that late, they can read from a phone like the rest of civilization.”
Annelise smiled. “Good.”
There was a pause, then Cecily asked, “Have you seen Malcolm again?”
“We had dinner Sunday.”
“And?”
“It was good.”
“That sounded suspiciously quiet.”
“It was very good.”
Cecily made a pleased sound. Annelise felt warmth rise in her face even though nobody could see it.
“I’m not asking for details,” her sister said. “You can stop preparing the refusal.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were breathing like someone about to say ‘personal.’”
Annelise laughed. “We had a lovely evening.”
“Good.”
The simplicity of her sister’s answer touched her. No joke about wedding dates, no assumption about where it must go next.
“What are you doing tonight?” Annelise asked.
“Trying to have dinner with Hugo without discussing chairs.”
“Ambitious.”
“I know. You?”
“Choir.”
“Again?”
“Yes.”
“Good again, then.”
They ended the call, and Annelise drove home with enough time to eat, change, and find the pencil she had put somewhere safe after the first rehearsal.
The pencil was in the folder. She felt disproportionately grateful to her earlier self.
At the hall, she used the correct entrance. The woman in the striped sweater from the previous week was wearing a plain blue shirt now, which briefly complicated recognition until she smiled and moved her bag from the chair beside her.
“You came back.”
“I did.”
“Good. I need someone to suffer the second page with me.”
Annelise sat and opened the folder. “I practiced it.”
“Did that help?”
“A little.”
“Dangerous precedent.”
The room filled gradually. Annelise recognized faces before names and found that recognition itself made the room easier to enter. The woman with leaf earrings waved from the soprano side. Someone asked whether the spare folders had been counted. Someone else had brought a bag of pencils and announced that borrowing one did not constitute a lifelong commitment.
Annelise took a pencil to pass down the row and noticed her neighbor searching through loose pages.
“Missing something?”
“The new arrangement. I printed the first and third pages twice, which was thorough but unhelpful.”
“You can share mine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Unless you turn pages very aggressively.”
“I’ll control myself.”
They angled their chairs closer. When the conductor began, Annelise held the folder between them. The small practical adjustment changed the rehearsal. She could no longer hunch over her own page as though hoping to remain undiscovered. She had to lift it, sit straight, make room.
The first piece went better than the previous week until a passage she thought she knew changed beneath her. She had learned one note incorrectly. Her neighbor sang the right one firmly enough that Annelise heard the difference and corrected herself on the next pass.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“For what?”
“Being right.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts.”
At the break, they went to the water table together. The woman asked whether Annelise lived nearby. She explained about the apartment near the old pool and the move back in June.
“I used to take my children swimming there,” the woman said. “Before they decided being seen with me was a threat to their future.”
“Did they recover?”
“One did. The other calls when he needs a recipe.”
“That’s something.”
“It is. I give him the recipe.”
Annelise smiled. The woman asked whether she had family in town, and Annelise told her about Cecily’s wedding. The conversation lasted only a few minutes, but it had the pleasant looseness of people who did not need to establish significance immediately.
When they returned to their seats, Annelise offered to send a photograph of the missing music page. Her neighbor produced her phone, they exchanged numbers, and the page traveled between them without becoming a promise of friendship larger than either had made.
The second half of rehearsal involved more listening than singing. The conductor worked with another section while the altos waited, then brought them back in at an awkward point. Annelise watched the raised hand, came in on time, and felt a small private satisfaction that did not require anyone else to notice.
Near the end, the full group sang through the piece without stopping. It was uneven. Someone coughed in a rest; the ending spread slightly before gathering. Annelise felt tired and glad. The thing they were making existed because people kept returning to try it together, and tonight she was one of them.
Afterward, she helped stack chairs. Her neighbor waved with the folder under one arm.
“See you Tuesday.”
“Yes.”
Outside, Annelise checked her phone. Malcolm had replied to the dessert joke with an entirely unconvincing claim that he was a man of refined culinary interests. There was also a newer message.
Hope rehearsal went well. I’m near your side of town collecting a camera battery I lent someone. Are you home after nine?
She looked at the time. Eight fifty-six.
Heading back now. Would you like tea?
The reply came while she was putting the folder into her bag.
Yes. If it isn’t too late.
It isn’t. I’ll send the address.
She did, including the apartment number and where he could park without attracting the attention of the building’s most vigilant resident. Then she drove home and spent six minutes noticing every object she had left out.
She did not clean the apartment. She moved a drying bra from the bathroom door, put her work shoes under the chair instead of beside it, and decided the unopened mail could remain exactly where it was. The place was hers. He had accepted tea, not an inspection.
When the buzzer sounded, her stomach tightened with a pleasure so sudden she had to stand still before answering.
“Come up.”
She opened the apartment door and waited. His footsteps approached on the stairs. Then he was there, holding nothing but his keys, his expression changing when he saw her.
“Hello.”
“Hello.”
He stepped inside. She closed the door behind him, and for a moment neither moved.
Then he bent his head and kissed her.
It was shorter than Sunday’s kisses and somehow more startling for being a greeting. She put a hand on his arm, steadying herself against the ease of it.
“Tea,” she said when he drew back.
“An excellent idea.”
He looked around without making a tour of it. The apartment’s main room opened into the small kitchen; a bookcase stood beside the window, its bottom shelf occupied by things she had not yet decided where to put. The sofa was a little too large for the wall, but she liked it and had brought it anyway.
“It’s nice,” he said.
“That’s kind. It’s small.”
“Both can be true.”
She smiled and went to the kitchen. He followed as far as the doorway.
“Can I help?”
“Choose a mug.”
She opened the cupboard. He selected a plain green one, leaving the chipped favorite she always chose herself. The small accidental compatibility pleased her more than it should have.
“How was choir?” he asked.
“Better. I knew where to sit.”
“A strong advantage.”
“And I shared music with someone. She’d printed the wrong pages.”
“Did you tell her about Final Final Use This One?”
“No. I decided to let her enjoy the evening.”
He laughed. She poured water into the teapot and set it on the counter.
“What were you photographing?”
“Nothing today. I lent someone a battery and charger, and he finally remembered to bring them home from work.”
“Did you get it back?”
He patted his jacket pocket. “Successful mission.”
They sat on the sofa with their mugs on the low table. Annelise had sat there alone so often that his presence altered the room more than any rearrangement could have. He was not too large for the space, exactly, but she was aware of him in every part of it: one arm resting along the back, his knee angled toward hers, the faint clean scent of soap when he leaned closer to hear something she said.
He asked about the folder on the table. She showed him the cover and explained the music without singing any of it. He turned one page carefully, looked at the notes with honest incomprehension, and handed it back.
“I can tell that’s difficult.”
“Because of the notes?”
“Because there are so many instructions in pencil.”
“Most of those mean breathe.”
“Useful instruction.”
She laughed. They talked about her workday, his visit to a supplier, the odd satisfaction of getting an ordinary problem solved. He did not turn the conversation into a demonstration of what either of them knew. She found herself leaning against the sofa, one foot tucked under her, listening to his account of a delivery that had arrived at the wrong workshop.
At some point he set down his mug and reached for her hand.
She gave it to him.
His thumb moved slowly over her knuckles while they talked. It made concentration difficult in a way she welcomed. When she lost the end of her own sentence, he looked at their joined hands and smiled.
“Distracting?”
“A little.”
“Should I stop?”
“No.”
The answer came cleanly. He leaned closer, and she met him with the same relief she had felt outside the restaurant, except now the sofa was beneath them and nobody was walking past.
They kissed until the tea cooled.
When he drew back, she rested her forehead briefly against his shoulder. She could have asked him to stay. The thought was clear, physical, and accompanied by a sudden shyness she had not expected at her age. She wanted more time, more touch, more of him in the room. She did not yet know what she was ready to ask for.
He glanced at the clock on the wall.
“I should go. Early start tomorrow.”
She lifted her head. “Of course.”
The words came too easily. He had made a reasonable statement. She had given a reasonable answer. Neither was responsible for the wish she had kept to herself.
He stood and took their mugs to the kitchen. She followed him, watching him set the green one beside the sink. A crescent of tea remained at the bottom.
“Thank you for having me,” he said.
“I’m glad you came.”
At the door, he kissed her again, slower this time. She held his jacket lightly between her fingers, then let go.
“Are you free Thursday?” she asked.
He looked at her. “I think so.”
“Dinner here. I’ll cook. Seven?”
His smile was immediate.
“I’d like that.”
“Good.”
“Can I bring anything?”
“Something to drink.”
“All right.”
He went down the stairs. She listened until the outer door closed, then returned to the kitchen. The room was quieter again, but Thursday had entered it. She rinsed the mugs, put the green one on the rack beside hers, and left them there to dry.