Bea chose the day of the shop’s inventory to mention a piece of the call. Nadia was counting lengths of moulding in the storeroom, and Bea had been assigned to put colored stickers on the bins. The stickers belonged to a school project that had ended; she had declared them better than the shop’s written labels. Nadia had not argued. Half the labels were old enough to name stock they no longer carried. Miss Laird’s summer theater workshop had taken over Bea’s afternoons now, with Hana and the cardboard city moving from the school room to a public showing at the library in July.
“He asked if he could send me a photograph of the set he’s building,” Bea said, pressing a yellow circle to a box.
Nadia kept her pencil against the pad. “Did you want one?”
“I said he could send a picture when it’s finished. He said okay.” Bea peeled another sticker. “He didn’t ask if I would come see it.”
“You told him you wanted photos before.”
“I know. I thought he’d ask again. I was glad he didn’t, and then I was annoyed he didn’t.” She examined the crooked circle. “That part doesn’t make sense.”
“It makes sense to me.”
“Don’t make a speech about it.”
“I was going to ask if the yellow means small lengths.”
“Yellow means things we have too many of.”
“Then it belongs on those three bins.”
They moved the stickers. Nadia let the one piece of the call remain one piece. She had wanted a transcript for weeks; this was not the moment to reward a fragment by pulling at it. Bea put green circles on the stock they needed to reorder and asked how much a frame shop paid a person to stand in a storeroom on a Sunday. Nadia said a fair wage and a snack, which made Bea ask why she had agreed to do it for only the snack. She negotiated an extra hour at the art store on the walk home.
At the counter Pilar was comparing the new bin list with orders due that week. She had begun coming in on Sundays for two hours by arrangement, paid at the same hourly rate as the weekdays. Her outside shifts had stabilized in May; she was no longer waiting for Nadia to make a full-time job appear. She had also become the person who caught when a customer wanted a deep frame but chose a shallow moulding from an old sample. Nadia trusted her judgment more than the sample wall.
“We need to talk about Saturdays,” Pilar said. “The Bell print and the two poster pickups will overlap. I can run the front and prepare the order cards if you’ll let me close them out without hunting you down.”
“You already know how.”
“I know. You don’t always let me.”
Bea made a low sound, pretending to whistle. Nadia looked from daughter to employee. “That was unnecessary,” she told Bea.
“Was it wrong?”
Pilar kept her eyes on the order cards. Nadia could have defended each interruption she’d made, and that would prove the point. “No,” she said. “Saturday pickups are yours to finish. We’ll review exceptions Friday. The rate should reflect the responsibility.”
“I was going to say that next,” Pilar said.
“You usually are.”
Pilar named a number. It was more than Nadia had prepared but less than hiring someone new and teaching them the shop. They checked the schedule, the reduced hours and the orders already on the books. Nadia accepted the number for six guaranteed hours each Saturday and an additional two on busy weeks with notice. Pilar wrote it on the calendar before either of them could retreat into a vague promise. Bea asked whether she would get a raise for the stickers. Pilar offered to pay her in the red sticker roll, which Bea called a terrible currency.
They finished the inventory with music from Pilar’s phone. When Nadia made an error on a moulding count, Bea crossed it out so thoroughly the paper tore. Pilar handed over a fresh sheet and said they were all allowed one ruined line. The shop hadn’t expanded. It had become easier to work inside because Nadia had stopped pretending every decision needed her fingers on it.
Oliver brought supper Tuesday as they’d arranged after the trip. He arrived to find Bea at the kitchen table cutting windows into cardboard towers. Nadia was still downstairs with a customer whose photograph had curled under its glass. Oliver held up a paper bag from a small restaurant and asked Bea whether there was space for food.
“Not on the table. This city is drying.”
“I can use the counter.”
“You can use the little table by the window if you don’t move my ruler.”
He obeyed. When Nadia came upstairs, the meal was laid out on plates and Oliver was reading a magazine about stage effects Bea had left open. She had told him that a smoke machine in an elementary school would set off alarms. He had answered that most hotels wouldn’t welcome one either. They were debating whether a fan could move tissue paper without moving the whole set.
“You have dinner,” Nadia said.
“And a technical problem,” Oliver said.
“The dinner may be easier.”
Bea covered her towers with a sheet of paper so no one would drip sauce on them. She ate with them, then asked whether she could go to Hana’s apartment to show her a revised wing. Hana’s mother had already called downstairs and approved the hour. Nadia checked the clock and agreed. Bea went with the wing in a folder, reminding Oliver not to let the food sit under her cardboard city.
The apartment quieted. Oliver carried plates to the sink while Nadia put her bag down. She watched him move around the paper towers without touching them. He had become familiar enough to know which cabinet held glasses, but not so familiar that he treated Bea’s half-built world as an obstacle. She liked him in that room. The feeling still had edges: Bea had not invited him there, and she might not always enjoy finding him at dinner. Tonight she had eaten and gone to a friend’s house. Nadia would let those be the facts.
“Eric sent me a message,” Oliver said. He rinsed a plate. “About the production. The opening is the first Friday in July. He said there would be a seat for me if I wanted one.”
Nadia took a cloth from the drawer. “Do you?”
“Yes. As a regular guest. Alone. The weekend building with him is still off.”
He had not asked her to manage the loss. Still, she felt a narrow jealous flash. Eric could have a night that was his with Oliver while she stayed home, and the childish part of her wanted to be the one he came to first afterward. She dried the plate. “Go,” she said. “You’ve been seeing his work for years.”
“I won’t use it to ask him to be all right with us.”
“I didn’t think you would.” She set the plate down. “I may wish I were there. That doesn’t mean I should be.”
Oliver turned off the water. “You can come if you want. He offered me a seat, not a rule about you.”
“I know. I want you to have an evening that belongs to your friendship. The word alone is my choice too.”
“You can change it.”
“I probably won’t.”
She didn’t want him to thank her as if she’d granted permission. She wanted him to see that separate nights were possible without a small lie attached. He came toward her and kissed her flour-dry hand, which was an absurd gesture considering she hadn’t baked anything. She asked what that had been for.
“No reason I can defend,” he said.
“Better.”
They ate the last of the food standing by the window. Bea came back before the agreed hour, flushed with the news that Hana had figured out the fan. She showed Nadia a video. Tissue birds rose above the cardboard buildings, then one snagged on a tower and tumbled. Hana’s laughter was louder than the motor. Bea replayed the failure three times.
“Will you send it to Eric?” Nadia asked.
“Maybe later. I have a different question first.”
“What is it?”
“I’m still making it.” Bea took the phone back. “You don’t have to help.”
Nadia nodded. Oliver, near the sink, had heard the exchange. He didn’t look away in embarrassment or move in to coax an answer. Bea asked whether he knew how to fix a fan that sounded like a lawn mower. He said his expertise was limited to ice machines that broke during weddings. She told him that didn’t count, then asked what he’d done about the ice. He gave the long version, including a flower arrangement sacrificed to hide the delivery entrance. Bea laughed at the flowers, not at him. Nadia listened to two people she loved talk about machinery neither understood.
On Friday Pilar ran the counter while Nadia examined a family photograph whose paper had thinned near one corner. Mrs. Bell came for a print and found Pilar ready with the order card, price and wrapping. Nadia heard their conversation through the workroom door. Mrs. Bell asked whether Nadia had seen the new choice of backing; Pilar said she had, then explained why the older backing had been kept. Mrs. Bell accepted the answer and paid. Nadia waited until she heard the door close before coming out.
“You didn’t need me,” she said.
“Correct.”
“She used to demand me.”
“She asked if you were here. I said yes. Then she asked me the question.”
Pilar wasn’t boasting. She looked pleased in the contained way she did when a frame fit precisely. Nadia showed her the delicate photograph and asked whether she’d use the same corner support they had used on the brother picture. Pilar thought not; this paper needed a lighter hold. They argued with two samples on the table until Nadia saw what Pilar meant. She wrote the chosen material on the order card. It was a small professional disagreement with a useful answer, far from the broad plan Martin had once made over the shop’s head.
The shop closed at six. Pilar had stayed an extra hour to finish the Saturday schedule, so Nadia paid it. They took the trash out together. Across the street a window display had changed from spring flowers to a row of painted umbrellas. Nadia realized it was nearly July. Bea’s stage show would soon happen, Oliver would see Eric’s set, and the shop would go on wrapping pictures and answering customers. None of those futures had to become one shared event.
On Saturday Pilar took the front counter at opening while Nadia finished the thin family photograph in the workroom. The first pickup came at ten. Nadia heard the bell and nearly went out from habit. She held the corner support in place for another count of five. Through the door, Pilar asked the customer to check the mat color against the actual print. The man said it looked darker than he’d expected. Pilar carried the piece to the window and held it in daylight. He changed his mind, then asked if they could wrap it so the glass would survive a train trip. Pilar chose stiff board, not the softer paper she’d planned. Nadia heard the board crease under Pilar’s thumb and let her finish.
At eleven Mrs. Bell returned, this time with a loose photograph rather than a complaint. It showed her sister at a lake, feet just outside the frame. She told Pilar she’d found it while cleaning a drawer and wanted it copied for her niece. Pilar asked whether the niece would want the original or a print. Mrs. Bell said the original stayed with her; she had learned the value of knowing where one was. Nadia worked on the thin photograph in the back and smiled at the unexpected joke.
She came out for lunch. Pilar had left a note on each order card and one unopened envelope on the counter. “For you,” she said. It was a payment from a customer who had moved away and settled his balance by mail. Nadia counted it, entered it in the book and realized she had spent two hours without checking that Pilar had made the same choices she would have made. Pilar had made better ones on the train wrapping.
“I need to go with Bea to the art store,” Nadia said. “She’s collecting a reward for inventory.”
“A high wage for stickers.”
“She negotiated well.”
“Go. I have the poster pickups after lunch.” Pilar took her sandwich from the little refrigerator. “I’ll call only if the building floods.”
“Please call before the water reaches the photographs.”
“Demanding boss.”
At the art store Bea went first to the papers. She found a pearly blue sheet and held it beneath the fluorescent lights, turning it until the color flashed green. Then she found a cheaper blue that didn’t shine at all. Nadia expected her to ask for the first one. Bea chose two of the cheaper sheets and a small brush. “The shiny one would make every scene about the sky,” she said. “Hana’s bird needs to be the thing people look at.”
Hana was in the next aisle with her father, searching for a glue that would hold cloth without drying stiff. She and Bea greeted each other by immediately disagreeing about the color. Hana wanted the shiny sheet, but when Bea held it beneath the bird’s yellow wing, Hana admitted the sky swallowed the shape. She suggested they use a strip of it only when the bird crossed the river. Bea said there was no river in this scene. The girls opened their notebooks on the floor and began arguing about which painted building the bird would fly over. Hana’s father stood beside Nadia with two glues and no way to help.
“Do they need us?” he asked.
“Only as drivers and wallets.”
“I can manage one of those.”
The girls settled on the plain blue with a hidden strip of shine behind the last building. Hana’s father bought the softer glue. Bea put the pearly sheet back on its rack, not because Nadia had told her to save money, but because the work had changed under her eyes. At the checkout Hana asked whether Bea had heard from Eric about the stage floor. Bea said she had a question she was still writing. She didn’t lower her voice or look to Nadia for permission to say the name. Nadia let the two girls carry their argument about the bird out into the street.
Nadia watched her weigh a constraint that had nothing to do with money, though the money remained real. At the checkout Bea counted the stickers’ reward against the price and had enough left for a packet of silver thread. They ate lunch on a bench outside. A girl from Bea’s class walked past with her father; Bea called out about Monday’s rehearsal and then bit into her sandwich. Nadia waited to see if the sight of a father would undo the easy hour. Bea asked whether the thread would catch on cardboard. Nadia answered the practical question. They went home with the paper rolled carefully between them.
That night she found Bea at home drafting an email on paper before typing it. The first lines were a question about how Eric made people onstage look closer to the audience than they really were. Bea had drawn a little audience below the words. She covered the lower half when Nadia approached.
“You can read the first part,” Bea said. “The rest isn’t ready.”
Nadia read what was offered. “It’s a good question.”
“He might tell me to come see it.”
“Then you can answer what you want.”
“I know.” Bea moved the page closer to herself. “I want to ask him something else later. I’m not writing it tonight.”
Nadia fetched her own ledger from the shelf and sat at the other end of the table. She had bills to enter and a new wage to account for. Bea wrote, erased and wrote again. They shared a lamp and did different work. When Oliver texted a joke about the disastrous soup recipe in the cookbook, Nadia smiled but waited to reply until the columns balanced. The silence across the table was comfortable enough that Bea hummed while she drew another row of seats.
Pilar would open the shop again the following Saturday and make decisions with Nadia available in the back. In July Oliver would sit in a theater without Nadia. Bea would send a question when it was hers to send. Nadia couldn’t know what Eric would answer or what he and Oliver would have to say after the show. She closed the ledger, turned the lamp toward Bea’s page and went to put the kettle on.