The suitcase shut on the third try. Delia had brought too many clothes and somehow needed more room to take the same clothes home. She knelt on the lid, worked the zipper past a fold of cardigan, and heard the small, satisfying click of its two ends meeting.
Outside, a car door closed. She stayed kneeling for a moment, with her palms on the dark green case. It was possible to look forward to seeing a person and dread the exact visit he was about to make.
Soren knocked with two fingers against the open door.
“Can I carry anything?”
“You can get this up the step. It has developed a grudge.”
He took the suitcase handle. The cuff of his shirt was rolled inside out, its seam exposed, and she wanted to fix it. Instead she checked the room one last time. Charger from the wall. Sunglasses from the windowsill. A damp washcloth hung over the shower rail; she put it with the other used towels. The cottage had returned to being a place someone else could occupy.
In the kitchen, Soren stood beside the empty counter.
“I thought about bringing breakfast,” he said. “Then I thought you might already have eaten.”
“I had a piece of toast.”
“That’s not very good breakfast.”
“It was very good toast.”
He looked at the clock, although neither of them needed to. Alma was coming at ten. Delia had chosen to leave at ten because it would put her home in the early afternoon, before traffic thickened around Bellweather. She had explained this twice yesterday. Now the reason seemed absurdly small beside the fact of leaving.
“You can still have lunch on the way,” he said.
“Soren.”
He rubbed his mouth. “Yes. I’m talking about toast.”
She went to him. His hands settled against her back, warm through her thin sweater. For a little while she rested her forehead under his chin. A delivery truck rattled past beyond the hedge. She could hear the loose clatter of something in its bed.
“Saturday,” she said.
“Saturday. I’ll come to you.”
She lifted her head to kiss him. This kiss had none of the surprise of their first. She knew how his beard would feel against the corner of her mouth, and that made the parting worse. When she pulled back, his hand stayed at her waist.
“Text me when you’re home?”
“I will.”
“I don’t need updates from every service station.”
“Good. I was going to give you a detailed account of the tire pressure.”
He smiled, then bent to pick up the suitcase. She followed him out, carrying the brass key in her closed hand.
Alma arrived while he was fitting the case into the hatchback. She had a folder tucked under one arm and a pair of gardening gloves in her back pocket. She greeted Soren by name, then asked Delia whether anything in the cottage needed attention.
“The small burner takes a while to light.”
“Again? Thank you. I’ll have somebody look at it before the next guests.”
Delia gave her the key. It left a shallow mark across the center of her palm.
“All clear?” she asked.
“All clear. I hope you had a good stay.”
The ordinary question caught her unprepared. She looked past Alma at the window, where the light was falling on the now bare sill.
“I did,” she said. “Thank you.”
Alma wished her a safe drive and went inside. There would be sheets to wash and the burner to see to. Delia was grateful that no one asked her to say what kind of stay it had been.
Soren closed the hatch. He stood on the driver’s side while she adjusted the seat, which had somehow felt different when she arrived. She had a sudden urge to get out again, to make a better goodbye, one that would preserve more than this awkward interval beside a car.
He leaned down to the open window.
“I booked a room near the museum for Saturday,” he said. “I’ll send you the name. You can tell me if it’s above a nightclub.”
“That depends. How do you feel about very bad dancing?”
“As a spectator or a participant?”
“I’ll inspect the address.”
His smile stayed as he stepped back. She started the engine and waited for a cyclist to pass. Then she drove away while she could still see him looking pleased to have made her laugh.
For the first half hour she noticed every place she had passed on the way in. The turn toward the beach. The shop with the crooked awning. The last pale strip of water between two low hills. Beyond that, the road demanded enough of her attention to be merciful. A truck slowed the whole line of traffic on a long incline. She changed the music when a song irritated her. At a gas station she bought a sandwich and ate half of it standing beside her car, with the wind lifting the paper from her hand.
She did not cry until she reached Bellweather.
It happened at a red light, two blocks from her apartment. On the corner stood the florist where she had taken a photograph of white flowers to send Russell. She hadn’t ordered from them in the end. That was the stupid part. This shop had done nothing, supplied nothing, lost no deposit. Yet she could remember standing outside it in winter, one glove between her teeth so she could use her phone.
The light changed. She wiped her face with the heel of her hand and drove through.
Her apartment smelled shut up. There was a faint dusty warmth beneath the familiar smell of the soap she kept by the sink. She opened the windows before taking off her shoes. From the street came a bus braking, a dog protesting, someone calling across the road. The sounds seemed much closer than they had before she left.
She set the suitcase in the bedroom and sent Soren a message.
Home. The hotel is respectable. No dancing that I know of.
His reply came while she was filling a glass at the tap.
Disappointing. Glad you’re back safely.
She put the phone facedown. The bedroom drawer was still closed. It contained the ring, a receipt for batteries, and a spare charging cable. She had expected the ring to announce itself somehow, to give the whole room a different weight. The room was only a room that needed airing.
Odette knocked shortly after three, carrying a bag and wearing the expression she used when pretending she had happened to be in the neighborhood.
“I brought groceries,” she said.
“You could have called.”
“Would you have answered?”
“Probably.”
“There you are.”
Her mother came in and placed the bag on the kitchen table. She had brought eggs, fruit, bread, and a container with a green lid. Delia looked at it suspiciously.
“What’s that?”
“Dinner.”
“You don’t have to feed me.”
“Fine. Feed me. I haven’t eaten.”
Delia found two plates. The small practical demand was easier than being asked how she felt. She warmed the food while Odette examined the plant on the windowsill and removed one dead leaf with the air of a person dealing with a neglectful tenant.
They ate at the table. Her mother asked about the drive, then the cottage, then whether the sea had been too cold. Delia described Alma’s garden and a film with a creature that seemed unable to bend its knees. Odette laughed at that, a surprised burst that made Delia realize how long it had been since they had talked about anything that wasn’t a problem.
“You look better,” Odette said.
Delia set down her fork.
“I wasn’t going to say it,” her mother added. “But you do.”
“I slept.”
“Good.”
“And I met someone.”
Odette’s face did not alter much. Only her fork stopped moving.
“Someone.”
“A man.”
“I gathered.”
There it was: the narrowing space in which Delia would either defend a future she hadn’t agreed to or let her mother call the whole thing a mistake. She reached for her glass and took a drink before saying anything more.
“His name is Soren. He owns a cinema. We’ve spent some time together, and he’s visiting Saturday.”
“From the coast?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a long drive for spending some time.”
“He knows how far it is.”
Her mother pushed a small piece of food around her plate. “I just don’t want you to be hurt again while you’re still—”
“I know.”
“You don’t know what I was going to say.”
“While I’m still hurt from Russell.”
Odette sighed. “Well. Yes.”
Delia looked at the bag of groceries, folded neatly beside the salt. Her mother had brought precisely the kind of bread she liked. It made it harder to be angry, which was mildly annoying in itself.
“I’m not marrying him,” she said. “I’m having a visit.”
“Does he know that?”
“He booked a hotel.”
“Oh.”
That one small word loosened something. Her mother began eating again. Delia told her that Soren was divorced and that he lived above the cinema. She did not tell her how his hand had felt against her back that morning. Some things would be made worse by being presented as evidence.
After the plates were cleared, Odette offered to help unpack. Delia refused. Her mother looked toward the bedroom, then back at her.
“Have you spoken to Russell?”
“Not since before I left.”
“He called me once.”
Delia’s hand tightened on the dish towel. “Why?”
“Asked whether you’d arrived safely. I told him I didn’t know yet.”
“You could have told me.”
“You were away. I didn’t think you needed him following you by telephone through me.”
Delia leaned against the counter. She had been ready for something else, for her mother to have supplied an account of her activities or agreed that everyone ought to remain reasonable.
“Thank you,” she said.
Odette shrugged. “I had other things to do.”
When her mother left, Delia stood for a moment in the open doorway. Down the hall someone was frying onions. A child was complaining about shoes. She closed her door and went back to the suitcase.
She put a load of laundry on, hung the clean clothes, and found sand in the folded hem of her pants. There was so little of it that she could lift most with a damp finger. She wiped it into the trash. The act made her throat ache, though she couldn’t have said why without making it sound foolish.
The museum bag waited under her desk. Before leaving, she had put it there with such determination that she had forgotten it existed. Now she pulled it out to make sure nothing perishable had remained inside for ten days. A pencil rolled onto the floor. Beneath a stack of notes lay a folded floor plan of the education room.
She spread it across the desk. In the last week before her leave, she had been trying to persuade Devon that adults might come to a museum in the evening without bringing children. They could handle copies of old photographs, argue about what a street had once been, contribute things that never made it into the formal labels. He had asked her where she intended to put everybody. She had drawn the tables in pencil, changed her mind, and drawn them again.
Looking at it now, she saw that she had left no proper space between two of the tables. Anyone using a chair with wheels would have to go around the long way. She rubbed out one rectangle and moved it. The room held fewer people that way, but people could actually use it.
Her phone lit up with a photograph from Soren. A film poster had slipped inside its frame so that the hero appeared to be hiding behind the bottom edge. Under it he had written, He knows how it ends.
She laughed and took a photograph of the floor plan in reply.
Back to moving imaginary furniture.
He asked what it was for. She gave him the short version, then almost added that it wasn’t anything important yet. Before she could, his next message arrived.
I’d go to that. Though I would probably identify every building wrong.
That was allowed, she told him. Sometimes it was the useful part.
She put the drawing back in the bag with a fresh sheet of paper. The pencil she left on the desk. Tomorrow she still had a day of leave; she could buy groceries she had chosen herself, have lunch somewhere, do nothing if she wanted. When she returned to work she would take the plan and ask Devon whether he had actually meant his question or had merely been trying to end the conversation.
At six, Russell sent a message.
Hope the trip was good. We should sort out the remaining costs. And the ring, obviously. Let me know what works.
She read the word obviously twice. Then she opened the drawer and took out the ring from beside her old watch. Its box was on the closet shelf. She found it beneath a scarf and put the ring inside, closing the lid before she could try it against her hand or examine it under the light.
Her first impulse was to ask Yasmin to come with her. Her second was to put the task off until after Saturday, when Soren’s visit might make her feel less exposed. She pictured all three of them being fitted into the same weekend, one person as a shield against another, and disliked the arrangement.
She typed that Friday morning would work. They could meet at the café near her apartment. She would bring the ring and her list of the shared cancellation expenses. Ten o’clock. Would that suit him?
His answer arrived almost at once.
Yes. Thanks for being sensible about this.
Delia placed the ring box in her bag, zipped the compartment shut, and set an alarm for Friday. Then she went to rescue her wet clothes from the machine.