Soren had answered her question on the bench without making her wait.
“I’d like to keep seeing you.”
Delia had felt relief first, then a rush of questions she didn’t know how to ask without sounding as though she had already planned the next six months. He had kissed her, and they had walked back to the cottage, and before they said good night he had promised to come by after work the following afternoon so they could make an actual plan.
Now her dark green suitcase lay open on the bed. She had put three things into it and taken two out again.
Alma knocked just before noon to confirm the next morning’s departure. She stood on the porch holding a small notebook and wearing gardening gloves she had forgotten to remove.
“Ten still all right?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll meet you here for the key. If I’m a few minutes late, just give me a call.”
“Of course.”
“Everything been okay?”
Delia looked back into the room. Her book was on the sofa. A towel hung over a chair near the open window, drying after yesterday’s swim.
“Yes. Thank you.”
Alma nodded, satisfied. “Drive’s easier if you miss the afternoon traffic.”
“I’ll leave after checkout.”
“Good plan.”
She went back down the path, stopping to pull a weed from the edge of the step. Delia closed the door and returned to the suitcase.
She would be going home tomorrow. The apartment would contain the ring in the drawer, the yellow colander in the cupboard, the invitation envelopes she hadn’t thrown away. Thursday was the last day of her booked leave; her next scheduled museum shift was Sunday. The ordinary sequence of days looked both reassuring and difficult.
She put the two shirts back into the suitcase.
At four, Soren arrived with nothing in his hands. She noticed because there had been food or towels or umbrellas on their previous outings, some practical reason to stand together. Today he had come to talk.
She kissed him at the door. He smiled against her mouth and followed her inside.
“Tea?” she asked.
“Please.”
While the kettle heated, he looked at the open suitcase through the bedroom door. His expression changed slightly, and she wondered whether the sight made her departure as solid for him as it had become for her.
They sat at the small table. Delia had cleared everything except the orange notebook and a pen.
Soren glanced at them. “Should I be worried?”
“Probably.”
He laughed, then became serious.
“I meant what I said yesterday.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know exactly how it’ll work.”
“Neither do I.”
She turned the notebook so it faced her, then closed it. The movement felt revealing enough that she wished she hadn’t made it.
“It’s three hours,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And you work evenings.”
“Most of them. Not all.”
“I work weekdays. Some events outside that.”
He nodded. “Would next Saturday work?”
“The nineteenth?”
“Yes. I could come to Bellweather. Stay overnight. There’s someone who can cover Saturday if I arrange it now.”
She looked at him. She had assumed, without noticing the assumption, that continuing would mean returning here. His offer brought her own city into the room: the museum, the noisy street outside her apartment, the corner store where the owner knew which newspaper her mother bought.
“I’d like that.”
“Good.”
He leaned back, his shoulders relaxing.
“There are hotels near me,” she said, then felt heat rise into her face. “I mean—”
“I was going to book one.”
“All right.”
“I wasn’t assuming.”
“I know. I just heard myself sounding like a tourist information desk.”
He smiled. “A useful service.”
She opened the notebook again and wrote the date. The act steadied her.
“What time would you come?”
“Late morning, if I leave early. We could have lunch.”
She thought about the museum, then stopped herself from building an itinerary around it. “Lunch would be good. We can decide the rest.”
“Look at us. Already organized.”
“Don’t encourage me.”
He reached across the table and touched her wrist.
“I’m looking forward to it.”
She covered his hand with hers. “So am I.”
For a while they sat quietly. The kettle clicked as it cooled. Outside, someone walked past on the public path, talking into a phone. Delia could hear only fragments: a delayed train, a person waiting, the practical negotiations of another life.
“There is something,” she said.
Soren looked up.
“I don’t want to tell everyone I’ve met someone wonderful and then feel I have to make it true.”
He took his hand back slowly, not withdrawing so much as giving the words space.
“All right.”
“That came out badly.”
“I think I understand.”
“I like you. I want you to come. I just don’t know very much yet.”
“Neither do I.”
She looked at him, relieved by the lack of injury in his voice and a little startled by the reminder that she too was mostly unknown.
“I know you get angry with movie endings,” he said. “And you don’t like being told how to fold things.”
“I like being told if it’s useful.”
His eyebrows rose.
“Fine. I don’t like it.”
He smiled, then said, “I don’t need you to make an announcement. I’d like to see you Saturday and find out some more.”
She nodded.
“That’s what I want.”
The conversation could have continued. Delia could feel more questions lining up: how often, what they were calling it, whether either of them expected something the other couldn’t offer. Some would matter later. Right now they had a date, a drive, a hotel to book, and the wish to see each other again. She let the next question remain unasked.
Soren stood to take their mugs to the sink. She stopped him with a hand on his sleeve.
“Leave them.”
He turned back. She rose and kissed him, sliding her arms around his waist. His hands settled at her back. The kiss deepened until she could feel the edge of the table against her hip and no longer cared about the mugs at all.
He drew back first, breathing a little harder.
“Would you like to get out of here?”
She smiled at the possible meanings. He laughed when he saw her face.
“Walk. Food. Something less sensible than discussing calendars.”
“Yes.”
They went into town and bought dinner to take to the beach. Delia chose badly, discovering halfway down the path that the paper bag was leaking. Soren took it while she searched for napkins. They arrived at a bench with sauce on his thumb and her jacket cuff.
“This looked easier in the shop,” she said.
“Most things do.”
They ate with the bag spread between them, guarding it against the wind. She stole a piece from his portion. He objected, then moved it closer. The sun was low enough to turn the wet sand silver, and the tide moved in shallow sheets toward their shoes.
Delia told him about the bus route her mother used to drive, how Odette still gave directions in stops rather than streets. Soren asked whether she liked being retired.
“She complains that nobody knows how to run anything.”
“Did she complain before?”
“Yes. But she could do something about it then.”
He laughed. “Would she like me?”
The question surprised both of them. He looked down at the bag.
“Sorry. That sounded—”
“She’d ask whether your tires were good for the drive.”
“They are.”
“Then you’d have a start.”
He smiled, accepting the small answer.
“Would you want to see the museum?” she asked.
“On Saturday?”
“If there’s time. You don’t have to.”
“I’d like to.”
She pushed the empty bag closed, then opened it again to fit in a stray napkin.
“It’s not very grand. People expect marble and enormous staircases when I say museum. We have a stubborn elevator and a room that smells faintly of pencils.”
“Sounds promising.”
“I like it.” She looked at him. “I complain about it, but I do.”
“What would you show me first?”
She thought of the objects visitors usually asked for, the oldest things, the things with a famous connection. Then she pictured a small case beside the window in the municipal collection.
“There’s a photograph album. A woman kept it for forty years. Almost none of the people are identified properly. Just things like us at the lake, or the hot day.”
“Useful.”
“Not for the records department. But I love it. You can watch the same person get older without knowing what her job was or whether anybody thought she mattered.”
He listened while she described a photograph of two women trying to lift a picnic table. One was laughing so hard she had let go. Delia had spent a slow afternoon once looking through the whole album, trying to identify the laughing woman in later pictures.
“Did you find her?”
“Yes. Much older. Same laugh.”
She smiled at the memory, then looked down at her hands.
“I’d like to get adults talking about things like that. Bring something, or choose an object. Tell us what they see. People who think they don’t know enough to come to a history event.”
“Like the shopping list.”
She looked at him, surprised he remembered. “Something like that.”
“Would they come?”
“I don’t know.”
He nodded. It was a reasonable question, and she appreciated that he hadn’t answered it for her with certainty.
“I’d have to find out what people actually wanted,” she said. “Not just what I wanted them to want.”
“That sounds harder.”
“It is.”
She tucked the napkin into the bag at last. “Anyway. On Saturday I’ll show you the album if it’s out. If not, you can experience the elevator.”
“Does it work?”
“Usually.”
He looked at her for a moment, then smiled. “I’ll wear sensible shoes for the stairs.”
They walked down to the water after eating. Delia rolled her pants above her ankles and carried her shoes. Soren did the same, but one cuff refused to stay up. She watched him bend to fix it twice before finally crouching and folding it more firmly herself.
He looked down at her.
“Was that taking over?” she asked.
“A little.”
“Do you object?”
“No.”
She stood, brushed sand from her hands, and took his.
The water was cold around their feet. She knew that now; the shock was smaller. They walked along the edge until the beach curved and the cottage disappeared behind the rise. Soren stopped to point out a line of birds moving low over the water.
“What kind?” she asked.
“Not gulls.”
“Your expertise has limits.”
“Firm ones.”
She leaned against him as they watched. His arm came around her shoulders. For a while they stayed there, the light changing slowly, neither trying to fill the space with a description of how good it was.
On the way back, they passed The Lantern. Soren checked the time and said he needed to collect something he had forgotten upstairs. Delia waited outside the separate entrance while he went in. She could hear his footsteps on the stairs, a door opening, then quiet.
The narrow doorway led to the part of his life she had not seen. She looked away before she could turn it into a test of whether he invited her. He came back carrying a book he had mentioned during dinner, an account of an old cinema’s first years.
“For you. If you want it.”
She took it. The cover was worn at the corners.
“Won’t you need it?”
“I’ve read it.”
“I’ll bring it back.”
“Or I can collect it.”
She smiled. “Saturday.”
“Saturday.”
At the cottage, the evening had grown cool enough that she switched on the lamp. Soren stood by the window while she put the book on the table. He looked out at the darkening sea, then turned when she came beside him.
She kissed him again. This time they moved to the sofa, sitting close, his hand warm against the back of her neck. She let herself lean into him, let the kiss become less careful, let her own hand travel over his shoulder beneath the edge of his open jacket.
After a while she rested her forehead against his.
“I should finish packing.”
He nodded, his eyes still closed for a second.
“Yes.”
Neither moved. Then they laughed softly, and he stood before she could ask herself whether she wanted to change her mind.
“I’ll see you in the morning?” he asked.
“Before ten. Alma’s coming for the key then.”
“I’ll be here.”
At the door he kissed her once, firmly, and stepped back onto the porch.
She watched him go, then closed the door and returned to the bedroom. The suitcase waited, patient and green and far less complicated than she had made it earlier.
She folded the clothes still hanging in the wardrobe. Put her swimsuit in a separate bag. Checked beneath the bed for a sock. The nightdress with the tag removed went beside the blue shirt. She had worn it to sleep in, alone, and found it comfortable.
On the table lay Soren’s book. She opened it and found a penciled note in the margin, a brief disagreement with the author that made her smile.
She put it into the suitcase last, above the clothes where it would be easy to reach.
Then she opened the orange notebook to the date she had written that afternoon and added her street address beneath it, ready to send him in the morning.