Russell arrived at four with no box of his own. Delia had not expected him to bring one, but the sight of his empty hands still irritated her. She had packed the books, carried them to the door, and spent three weeks stepping around them. He only had to take them away.
“Here,” she said.
He bent to look at the box. “That’s all of them?”
“All the ones I found.”
“Thanks.”
He did not lift it. Behind him, the hall was empty. Delia kept one hand on the door, unsure whether he was waiting to be invited in or simply making an awkward task more awkward by refusing to begin it.
“Do you want to check?” she asked.
“No. I believe you.”
“Then—”
“Can we talk for a minute?”
She looked at his face. He seemed tired. It was such a familiar kind of tiredness that she almost asked whether his trip had gone badly. She knew the conferences he disliked, the clients who called late, the way he rubbed his forehead when he wanted sympathy without having to request it.
“What about?”
“Us.”
She let go of the door. “There isn’t an us to sort out.”
“I know. I mean how we ended it.”
“You ended it.”
He looked down the hall. “Could I come in? I don’t want the whole building hearing.”
No one was there to hear. Still, she stepped aside. He came in, leaving the box by the door, and stood near the table. He did not sit. She was glad he had retained enough sense not to settle into the chair as if he belonged there.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said.
Delia waited. Her laptop was open on the desk, the proposal visible beneath a screen that had dimmed. She had been working on it before he arrived. The sight of it helped her stay in the room instead of moving backward through the years at the sound of his voice.
“Maybe we rushed things,” he said.
“Which things?”
“The ending. Making it all so final so quickly.”
“You called off our wedding.”
“I know that.”
“And asked for the honeymoon booking.”
He winced. “That was appalling. I know. I shouldn’t have asked.”
It was the first time he had named that request without trying to make it smaller. She felt a brief, unwelcome relief. Some part of her had still wanted him to understand why it had hurt, even after everything that followed.
“No,” she said. “You shouldn’t.”
“I was caught up in what I thought I wanted.”
She folded her arms, then unfolded them. “Is this about Sabine?”
“It’s about us.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
He looked at the table. “Things are complicated.”
“Then talk to her.”
“Delia.”
“I’m not the person who can help you with that.”
He pressed his lips together. She could see him trying to recover the conversation he had expected to have. Perhaps she had been kinder in it. Perhaps she had admitted she missed him and allowed him to continue from there.
“Seven years is a long time,” he said.
“Yes.”
“We knew how to make things work.”
She looked around the apartment. There were things he knew about her that Soren didn’t: which neighbor would take in a parcel, how she behaved when she had a headache, what kind of silence meant she was angry and what kind meant she was reading. The knowledge had weight. She could feel its pull even now, standing beside the table with him.
“We knew a lot about each other,” she said.
“Exactly.”
“That isn’t the same.”
He rubbed his forehead. There it was, the gesture she had expected. She waited through it without offering the next line.
“I’m not asking you to decide anything now.”
“I already have.”
He looked up.
“I’m not coming back to this,” she said. “I don’t want to try again.”
“You can’t know that forever.”
“I know it now. That’s the answer I have.”
For a moment he looked angry. Then the expression passed, leaving something smaller and less certain. She was sorry for him in a way that did not require her to change what she had said.
“All right,” he said finally.
She went to the door and picked up one side of the box. “It’s heavy.”
“I’ve got it.”
He took it from her. A corner caught against the doorframe, and they both moved automatically to free it, performing one last small task together. Then he was in the hall with the books against his chest.
“Take care,” he said.
“You too.”
She closed the door after him. The empty space where the box had stood looked larger than it should have. She put a pair of shoes there, then moved them back because that was a silly thing to do merely to fill a patch of floor.
Her hands were shaking. She sat on the edge of the sofa until they stopped.
Then she went to the bookcase. The bottom shelf held a space the exact width of the guides. She knelt and wiped the dust from it with a cloth. Behind the books she had found nothing dramatic: no forgotten letter, no photograph, no evidence that would revise what she already knew. There was a loose paper clip and a receipt too faded to read. She threw the receipt away and put the clip in the desk drawer.
For a moment she wished Russell had been crueler. It would have made the visit easier to recount. He had looked tired and sorry. He had said something she had once wanted desperately to hear: perhaps they could try again. She had refused him, and now she was alone in a room that still contained years of things they had chosen together.
She picked up a book of her own and moved it to the empty shelf. Then another. She stopped before she could reorganize the whole room. There was work waiting on the desk, and she wanted it finished more than she wanted the shelves transformed.
At the laptop she read the same paragraph three times. The words would not settle. She closed the document without changing it, stood, and took the trash downstairs. In the courtyard, a neighbor was trying to fit an oversized carton into a bin. Delia held the lid while he bent it. He thanked her, and she went back upstairs.
Yasmin called twenty minutes later to ask about a practical matter involving the clips she had borrowed. Delia answered the question, then said Russell had been over. Yasmin went quiet.
“Do you need company?”
“A little.”
“I’ve got about an hour. I have to finish something tonight.”
“An hour’s good.”
Yasmin arrived with a bag full of papers and an apologetic expression. She put the bag beside the table and hugged Delia without speaking. That nearly undid her. She had been able to recount the visit on the phone without crying; standing against her friend’s shoulder was worse.
“Oh, don’t,” Yasmin said, already reaching for a tissue. “I mean do, obviously. Here. It’s clean.”
Delia laughed and cried at the same time, an unpleasant combination that made her nose run. Yasmin guided her toward the sofa and sat beside her.
“What did he say?”
Delia told her. She tried to give a fair account, which was difficult when every phrase sounded worse after being repeated. When she reached the part about seven years, Yasmin made a noise of disgust.
“As if you’d forgotten.”
“I hadn’t.”
“Did you tell him about Soren?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Delia turned the tissue in her hands. “That isn’t going especially well either.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. What happened?”
She gave the short version of the job listing and the canceled visit. Yasmin listened without interrupting, which was unusual enough that Delia began to worry she had made herself sound absurd.
“Well,” Yasmin said at last, “at least you know early.”
Delia looked at her. “Know what?”
“That he does this.”
“He did it once.”
“Once is enough to be cross.”
“I am cross. I’m not sure it’s enough to decide everything.”
Yasmin leaned back. “All right. I went too fast.”
“You did.”
“I don’t like people making you cry.”
“Russell made me cry. Soren made me furious.”
“A varied week.”
Delia laughed weakly. Yasmin took the used tissue from her before it could disintegrate and put it in the bin. When she returned, she sat at the other end of the sofa, giving Delia room to pull her knees up.
“Do you want to go back to Russell?” she asked.
“No.”
“You answered that quickly.”
“It isn’t the same as not missing anything.”
Yasmin nodded. She looked tired herself, with a small line of dried paint near her wrist. Delia had been so absorbed in her own account that she had barely noticed the papers in the bag.
“What do you have to finish?”
“Labels. And a speech I don’t want to give. And a list of everything that will go wrong if I forget it.”
“Can I help with the labels?”
“You don’t have to.”
“I can cut straight lines. It’s one of my few reliable skills today.”
Yasmin fetched the bag. They spread the papers on the table, and Delia found scissors. For the next half hour they worked side by side. Some of the labels had students’ first names and descriptions of pieces Yasmin had been teaching them to make. One description was unexpectedly funny. Delia read it aloud, and Yasmin laughed with her whole face.
“He fought me on that sentence for a week,” she said. “He was right.”
Delia asked to see a photograph of the work. Yasmin showed her several, talking faster now, explaining which student had finally tried something difficult and which had needed to start again. One had made a strange angular bird from scraps of cardboard. Its beak was too large, its legs too thin, and it appeared furious about being photographed.
“I have something for you,” Delia said.
She found the card she had bought in Gullhaven and handed it over. Yasmin studied the illustrated bird.
“He looks like my department head.”
“I haven’t written it yet.”
“Don’t. I’ll use it as a portrait.”
She propped it against the stack of labels. Delia laughed, then asked how the end-of-term preparations were going beyond the papers on the table. Yasmin sighed and began describing a disagreement over wall space. Delia offered an obvious solution, and Yasmin shook her head before she finished.
“Already tried. It isn’t really about the wall.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I wish it were.”
She talked for several minutes, not looking for advice so much as a chance to say the unreasonable parts aloud. Delia trimmed a crooked edge on a label and listened. When Yasmin reached the end, she asked whether Delia thought she was being petty.
“A bit,” Delia said.
Yasmin stared at her, then laughed. “Thank you. I thought so.”
“But the other person sounds worse.”
“Now you’re just being loyal.”
“I can do both.”
They finished the remaining labels. Yasmin checked each name against her list while Delia stacked the scraps. The bird card stayed beside them, looking dissatisfied with the result.
When Yasmin left, the labels were stacked neatly and Delia had agreed to attend the school event.
Alone again, Delia opened the proposal. The screen brightened on the last paragraph she had been editing before Russell arrived. She read from the beginning, making a few changes and resisting the urge to improve every sentence. The plan had a date, a capacity, a modest budget, and a purpose she could say aloud without sounding like a brochure.
She printed a copy and read it at the table. The paper helped her see a repeated line and a missing word. She corrected both, saved the file, and gave it a name she would be able to find on Tuesday. It was ready to submit by the deadline. She wanted one last clear morning to look at it, not another weekend of taking it apart.
Before putting it away, she stood and tried the opening aloud. Not the wording of the proposal, but what she might actually say to a room full of people. The first attempt sounded like a school assembly. She stopped, sat down, and tried again from the chair. That was better. She could introduce herself without standing over everyone. She could put the photographs in their hands before asking anything.
Her neighbor’s television started through the wall. Delia raised her voice to compete, heard herself doing it, and laughed. The real room would have its own noises. She made one note about checking the door to the corridor, then folded the paper. The rest would have to wait until she knew whether there was an evening to prepare for.
The coastal job listing was still saved in her browser. She opened it. The duties had not changed. The salary had not risen. She could imagine doing the work competently and feeling smaller each time she explained why she had left the museum.
She deleted the saved listing. Then she closed the tab before she could turn that action into a promise never to move anywhere. She might move someday. She might choose another job. This was simply the wrong one.
For Sunday, she searched the road between Bellweather and Gullhaven and found a café near a small park roughly halfway. Ninety minutes for each of them, if the traffic behaved. Daytime. Somewhere they could walk if sitting across a table became too much.
She sent Soren the address and asked whether noon would work. His reply came a few minutes later.
Yes. I’ll be there.
She put the phone down beside the finished proposal. She slipped the pages into her work bag, then checked that the electronic copy had saved properly. Tuesday’s deadline was written on the calendar above her desk; she had no need to set another reminder. In the hall, the empty patch of floor remained empty.