Russell was already at the café. He had chosen the table near the window where they used to sit, and he stood when he saw her, half rising into an embrace that she had not offered.
Delia placed her bag on the empty chair beside her.
“Hello.”
He lowered himself again. “You look well.”
“I’ve been away.”
“Yes. How was it?”
“Good.”
She sat. A server came over before Russell could ask anything else, and Delia ordered coffee. He had already ordered hers, he said, but he could change it if she wanted something different. She looked at the cup waiting on her side of the table. For a moment its presence bothered her more than anything he might have said.
“This is fine,” she told the server. There was no reason to waste it.
Russell watched her take off her jacket. He wore a pale blue shirt she remembered buying with him. Not buying for him; she caught herself making that small revision. He had tried it on, asked what she thought, and paid for it himself. They had been two people doing an ordinary thing. She didn’t have to turn every shared hour into labor he had extracted from her.
“Thanks for meeting,” he said.
She took the ring box from her bag and put it on the table between them. He stared at it, then moved it closer to his cup.
“You didn’t have to bring it like that.”
“In its box?”
“I meant we could have talked first.”
“We are talking.”
He pressed a finger against the lid without opening it. Outside, a woman was trying to fold a stroller while holding a paper bag under one arm. Delia watched her set the bag down, then try again. She wanted to be that woman for the next twenty minutes, with a problem that would yield to a catch and a firm push.
Russell cleared his throat. “I made a list.”
“So did I.”
They took out their papers. His was printed; hers was written on the back of an envelope, which made her briefly wish she had printed it too. Then she found the first expense he had missed and stopped caring.
The discussion was smaller and duller than she had feared. A refund had arrived from one supplier. Another deposit was lost. They had each paid different things at different times, sometimes with one person reimbursing the other, sometimes simply because it was their turn. Neither wanted to reconstruct every dinner or tank of gas from seven years.
“The cottage was yours,” he said.
“Yes.”
“And you used it.”
She looked up. He held up one hand.
“I’m not saying anything about it. Just that it doesn’t belong in the shared figure.”
“It isn’t in the shared figure.”
He looked down at her envelope. “Right.”
She had expected a fight about the trip and had prepared for one in the shower. Its absence left her with several useless sentences and a sudden, unreasonable irritation that he was behaving sensibly about money. There had been years when this was what she liked about him: he could make a difficult task orderly. He knew which document to keep and which number to call. It had taken her longer to notice the things he filed outside the task.
They agreed on an amount. Russell made the transfer while she watched a child on the next table draw a circle around a spill. Her phone chimed. She checked the number, nodded, and folded her envelope.
“That’s everything financial,” she said.
“As far as I can see.”
“Good.”
He put his phone down with careful precision.
The server asked whether they wanted anything else. Russell looked at Delia before answering, the old habit still in place. She shook her head. He asked for the bill, then paused as if paying for both coffees might be mistaken for something larger. Delia let him pay. They had already spent twenty minutes separating expenses; she didn’t want to spend another five separating two cups.
“I know I’ve handled some of this badly.”
Delia kept her hands around the cup. “Some of it.”
“Very badly.” He glanced toward the window. “I was trying to be honest once I knew.”
“You knew before you told me.”
“I was trying to be certain.”
“For six weeks.”
His face reddened. She had no satisfaction in it. She wanted him to stop describing a period during which he had made choices as though he had been waiting for a weather report.
“I didn’t come to do this again,” she said.
“Neither did I. But I don’t want you to think the whole thing was false.”
The server passed behind him carrying plates. Delia waited until she had gone. “I didn’t say that.”
“You won’t tell me anything. How you are. What you’re doing. I don’t even know what to say when people ask.”
“You can say we aren’t getting married.”
“They know that.”
“Then you’re up to date.”
He sat back. The small rebuff had hurt him; she could see it. Once, she would have rushed to soften it so the rest of the conversation could proceed without that look on his face. She took a drink instead, though the coffee had cooled enough that she didn’t want it.
Russell touched the ring box again. “I thought we’d be able to remain kind to each other.”
“I haven’t been unkind.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I’ve met you. We’ve settled the costs. I’ve returned the ring. I’m not going to help you tell people this was a decision we made together.”
He opened his mouth, then shut it. For the first time that morning, he seemed to have no prepared response.
The woman outside finally folded the stroller. Delia watched her pick up the bag and walk away with the folded frame banging against her knee.
“What about my books?” Russell asked.
The change was so abrupt that she almost laughed. “They’re still on the bottom shelf.”
He had left a collection of old travel guides at her apartment long before the engagement. They had used two of them, argued over one, and ignored the others. She had discovered them while putting away her museum bag yesterday. They were too heavy to bring to the café and too clearly his to throw out without asking.
“I’ll box them up,” she said.
“I’m away for work most of next week, and the weekend after is difficult.”
“June eighth, then. Late afternoon.”
He checked his calendar. “That works. I can collect them from you.”
“Four.”
“Four.”
She wrote it down. He looked at the envelope as though she had taken minutes of something that ought to have remained intimate.
“Is there anything of yours at my place?”
She considered. He had already returned the things she used regularly. There might be a hair tie beneath a chair, a book she no longer remembered lending him. Nothing she wanted enough to arrange another visit.
“Nothing I need.”
He nodded and put the ring box in his jacket pocket. The table looked strangely bare after it was gone. Delia had expected to feel lighter. Instead she felt the exact pressure of her own elbows on the table and wished she had not let him order her coffee.
Outside, he asked whether she wanted a ride home. Her apartment was ten minutes away on foot. They both knew it.
“I’ll walk.”
“Of course.”
He made that half movement toward her again, then stopped. “Take care, Delia.”
She said goodbye and went in the opposite direction from his car.
Halfway home, she turned into a small grocery store because she did not want to arrive at the apartment yet. The aisles were narrow, and a man was blocking the pasta with a basket while studying a jar. She waited longer than she needed to before asking him to move. He apologized at once. She took the first packet she saw, then put it back because she didn’t want pasta.
What did she want? The question had become irritatingly large. At that moment she wanted lunch, some clean towels, and a way to stop replaying the look Russell had given her when she named the six weeks. She bought bread and a peach that smelled promising. It could be a disappointing peach. She was willing to risk it.
At home, she ate standing at the counter. Juice ran over her thumb. She washed her hands, then went to the bookcase and began pulling Russell’s guides from the bottom shelf. One contained a folded map. Another had a hotel card tucked inside it, from a trip they had taken four years ago.
She left the card where it was. The books went into a cardboard box from her closet. She wrote his name on a piece of paper and laid it on top, then put the box beside the front door. Four o’clock, June eighth. Until then she could walk around it.
Soren called while she was changing the sheets.
“Bad time?”
“Only if you need both my hands.”
“I was going to ask you to conduct an orchestra.”
She put him on speaker and trapped one corner of the sheet under the mattress. “You’ll have to settle for this.”
He told her his arrival time for tomorrow, then asked whether she wanted to meet at his hotel or somewhere else. She suggested the museum. It was open on Saturdays, and she had always wanted to go through the new street-life display without being stopped to answer questions about the bathroom.
“Will they let you do that?” he asked.
“Probably not. I can disguise myself.”
“Hat? False beard?”
“A different bag. That’s generally enough.”
He laughed. She sat on the edge of the unmade bed, the last corner of the sheet still loose.
“I saw Russell this morning,” she said.
There was a brief pause. “How was it?”
“Finished, mostly. Ring and money. There’s a box of books he’ll collect next month.”
“Okay.”
She appreciated that he did not ask how much money or what Russell had said about him. Russell didn’t know about him. She had not needed to say his name.
“I’m a bit tired,” she admitted.
“We can do something quiet tomorrow.”
“I want to take you to the museum.”
“Then take me to the museum.”
It was such an easy correction that she smiled. He had another show to prepare for and had to go. She finished making the bed after they hung up, pulling the last corner too hard and having to start again.
The weather forecast for tomorrow showed rain after lunch. She opened the museum website to check the current exhibition hours, then caught herself making an itinerary with three separate indoor alternatives. Soren had only asked where they should meet. He had not asked her to fill every hour until he drove home.
She called the museum’s public number anyway. The colleague who answered recognized her voice and wanted to know if she was all right. Delia said she was, then asked whether the upstairs display was open through the afternoon.
“All day. Are you coming in early?”
“I’m bringing a friend.”
“Oh, lovely. You can see what we did with your photograph labels. The large ones look much better.”
Delia smiled. Before her leave, there had been a small argument about those labels. The original type had looked elegant from three inches away and vanished at any useful distance. She had asked for larger lettering, received a reply about the integrity of the design, and eventually walked the designer back from the wall until he could no longer read his own work.
“I’m glad,” she said. “I won’t be working, though.”
“Of course not. Enjoy your last day off.”
“I will.”
She put the phone down and crossed two items from the itinerary. The fact that she had to cross them out, rather than simply stop composing it, made her laugh at herself. Then she added the museum address to a message for Soren and told him where the public parking entrance was. That much was useful. The rest could wait until he arrived and expressed an opinion.
When she looked again at the folded list from the café, she found a small arithmetic note in Russell’s handwriting on her envelope. He had borrowed her pen to make it. There was something painfully familiar about the slant of the numbers. She checked that the transfer had cleared, took a photograph of the list for her records, and put the envelope with the other settled bills. It did not belong in the drawer with her private letters, where she had nearly placed it out of habit.
Later, she began tidying the apartment for his visit. She put away the laundry, cleaned the sink, moved a pile of museum notes from the table to the desk, then from the desk to a drawer. Standing there with the drawer open, she realized she could spend the rest of the afternoon concealing evidence of how she lived.
The cottage had been easy to keep lovely. Almost nothing in it belonged to her. Here, a chair had a torn patch on its seat, and the kitchen shelf leaned enough that she kept the heavier bowls at one end. Her books would not fit neatly. There were shoes by the door because she wore them.
She took the museum notes out again and put them on the desk. Then she sat in the torn chair to answer Soren’s message about the hotel address. He had added a photograph of a shirt laid on a bed.
Is this too much for a museum? I seem to have dressed for a hearing.
It was an ordinary dark shirt. She liked it, which was hardly useful advice.
Wear whatever you can walk in, she wrote. You’ll be judged on your opinions.
Of the museum?
Of the shirt, obviously.
She set down the phone and looked around her apartment. Tomorrow he would stand in this room. He would see the chair, the crowded shelves, the box by the door. She pictured him sitting at her table and found she was more nervous than she had been before their first date.