At nine, Delia received an email asking whether the names on the welcome sign were correct.
For several seconds she stared at them. Delia and Russell, joined in a cheerful script above the date that had already passed. Beneath the image, an automated message thanked her for choosing the company and invited her to approve the design.
She had canceled the sign on Thursday. She found the confirmation, forwarded it, and asked for written assurance that nothing would be sent. Then she put the phone facedown on the table and went to brush her teeth.
Halfway through, she remembered coffee at eleven.
She had not thought about what to wear. Now every garment seemed to say something she hadn’t intended. The blue shirt looked too careful. The gray sweater was shapeless. Jeans were jeans, which was a relief. She put them on with the blue shirt and rolled the sleeves twice, then once.
The phone buzzed while she was drying her hair. A real person had apologized for the automated email. The order was canceled. No sign would be made.
She deleted the design attachment without opening it again.
Before leaving, she checked the cottage confirmation for the checkout time. Ten in the morning on the sixteenth. Payment received in full. One guest, amended. The practical information occupied half a page; the other half advertised optional flowers and food baskets. She folded it with those offers on the inside and put it back in the folder.
At eleven Soren was outside the cinema, exactly where he had said he would be. He wore a charcoal sweater and held two folded umbrellas.
“I don’t trust it,” he said, looking at the sky.
“Neither do I.”
He handed her one. Their fingers touched around the handle, briefly enough that she could have ignored it if she wanted to.
She didn’t want to.
The cafe near the harbor had small tables and windows that needed washing. Soren asked which table she preferred. Delia chose one at the side, where she could see the boats without sitting directly in the draft from the door.
He went to the counter. She watched him speak to the person there, saw the familiar nod they exchanged, and felt the little distance between being a visitor and belonging somewhere.
When he came back, he placed the tray down too close to the edge. She moved it inward.
“Thanks.”
“Occupational reflex.”
“Museum trays?”
“Children, water, things balanced where they shouldn’t be.”
He looked at the tray. “I’m forty-two. I should have mastered it.”
“There’s time.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-seven.”
He nodded without making anything of the difference. Delia had worried, absurdly, that he might be younger than she thought. Up close she could see the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, the weathered skin along his cheekbones. She liked those details. They made the attraction feel less like something she had invented in poor light.
He asked how long she had worked at the museum.
“Six years.”
“Do you like it?”
“Mostly. I like the work more than the meetings about the work.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“What meetings do you have?”
“Occasional ones with myself. Very difficult man.”
She smiled, but he was looking down at his coffee as if he regretted making a joke instead of answering.
“I have a part-time assistant,” he said. “And people I deal with for bookings. Repairs. The bank, when it wants reminding that I exist.”
“You own the place?”
“For five years now. The bank owns an enthusiastic share.”
“Was it always what you wanted?”
“No. I worked in distribution for a while. Then helped run another place. I kept thinking I knew how I’d do it differently.”
“And did you?”
“Some of it. Other things turned out to be difficult for reasons I hadn’t bothered to understand.”
He spoke plainly, not trying to make the story more impressive. Delia found herself leaning closer over the small table.
“What surprised you?”
“How much time I spend thinking about toilets.”
She laughed into her cup.
“Sorry. Honest answer.”
“I asked.”
“Also how much I like people coming back. Not a huge crowd. Just someone who saw something last week and wants to tell me what they thought.”
“Even when they hated the ending?”
“Especially then.”
The door opened, letting in a gust that lifted a napkin from the next table. Soren caught it before it reached the floor and returned it to the woman who had lost it. Delia watched his hand settle back beside his cup.
She wanted him to ask another question. She wanted the coffee to last long enough for wanting that to feel less foolish.
“Do you ever watch something just because it’s there?” she asked. “On television, half asleep?”
“Of course.”
“What?”
“Terrible renovation programs.”
She laughed. “Really?”
“I like seeing a room finished. Although sometimes they knock down a wall I liked.”
“That sounds stressful.”
“I complain at the screen.”
She could imagine it too easily: him stretched on a sofa, bare feet on a table, indignant about a wall. The picture brought an unexpected warmth to her face.
“What do you watch?” he asked.
“Cooking programs.”
“Do you cook?”
“Badly. Watching apparently doesn’t transfer the skill.”
“What goes wrong?”
“I get impatient. Something says twenty minutes, and at twelve I decide it’s probably enough.”
“That would do it.”
“Or I follow all the instructions and it still looks nothing like the picture.”
“Pictures lie.”
“Mine looks like it was dropped.”
He laughed, and she felt pleased in a way that was embarrassingly physical, a lightness under her ribs.
She reached for the sugar, then remembered she hadn’t wanted any. Her hand stopped halfway across the table. Soren moved the bowl toward her, misunderstanding, and she took a packet because explaining would be worse.
“You don’t have to use it,” he said after she set it beside her cup.
“I might.”
“All right.”
He looked out at the boats. She was grateful for the small reprieve.
A man on the nearest deck was trying to fold a blue tarpaulin in the wind. Each time he got one corner under control, another lifted. Soren watched with the concentration of someone who wanted to help and knew he would only get in the way from this distance.
“He needs another person,” Delia said.
“He needs to roll it.”
“Would that work?”
“Probably not. But I’d have tried it by now.”
The man sat down on the tarpaulin. Both of them laughed, then looked at each other across the table. Delia let the look last a second longer than she had intended.
His phone rang.
He looked at the screen and grimaced. “Sorry. I need to answer.”
He stepped outside. Through the window she could see him listening, one hand pressed over his other ear against the traffic. He said something, waited, then looked toward the cinema.
When he returned, he didn’t sit.
“The delivery’s arrived early. Replacement equipment. They won’t leave it with anyone else.”
“Oh.”
“I thought I had until twelve.”
“It’s fine.”
It was eleven twenty-four. Her coffee was still too hot to finish.
“I can walk you back,” he said, already reaching for the umbrella.
“You don’t need to. I’ll stay a little.”
He paused. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“All right. I’m sorry.”
He put money on the tray for both drinks before she could reach her purse.
“I’ll get the next one,” she said.
He looked at her then. “Good.”
After he left, she watched the door until it swung shut. The empty chair opposite her seemed louder than it should have.
She took a sip of coffee and burned her tongue.
Of course he had work. He hadn’t promised an entire morning. She knew those things and still felt abandoned in a small, humiliating way. The feeling irritated her more than his departure had.
She opened her notebook and stared at the blank page. At the top she wrote groceries, then crossed it out because she had enough groceries. She did not need to invent an errand to justify leaving a cafe.
Outside, Soren was already out of sight.
She stayed until her coffee was finished, then asked the person at the counter where the local history collection was. The woman pointed toward a side street and warned her that it closed for lunch.
Delia thanked her and went.
The collection occupied two rooms above a former shop. A narrow staircase led to a desk where an older volunteer sat with a crossword. Delia paid the small admission charge and accepted a leaflet.
“First room is the harbor,” the volunteer said. “Second’s domestic life.”
“Thank you.”
“If you have questions, I might know. Depends what they are.”
The first room contained photographs, a model boat, and labels printed in type too small for anyone without excellent eyesight. Delia leaned close to read one, automatically judging the height of the display, then made herself step back. She was a visitor today. Nobody had asked for an assessment.
A photograph showed women sitting outside a factory, their lunch tins on their knees. One woman had turned away from the camera, laughing at something beyond the frame. Delia looked at her longer than at the boats.
In the second room, a case held household objects donated by local families. A chipped mixing bowl. A wooden toy missing a wheel. A handwritten shopping list tucked beside a ration book. The list included ordinary things and, at the bottom, a reminder to collect a child from an aunt.
The exhibit label identified the donor but said nothing about the child.
Delia went back to the desk.
“Do you know anything about the shopping list?”
The volunteer laid down her pen. “Which one?”
“In the case by the window.”
They went together to look. The woman unlocked a drawer beneath the case and found a folder with the donor’s notes. There were three pages of careful handwriting. Delia read them while the volunteer stood beside her.
The child had grown up, moved away, and returned in retirement. She had donated the list because it was in her mother’s handwriting. There was nothing dramatic in the account. Her mother had worried about money, disliked the wind, and made a pudding the daughter had never managed to reproduce.
Delia looked through the glass again. The writing was hurried, the last line squeezed into a corner.
“She says here she remembers waiting for her aunt to bring her home,” Delia said. “She thought she’d been forgotten.”
“Children do.”
“Yes.”
The volunteer read over her shoulder. “We could put some of that with it.”
“It might be nice.”
“Would need bigger print than the boat labels.”
Delia laughed, caught. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“I can barely read them myself.”
They talked for several minutes about the donations, the difficulty of choosing what to display, the people who brought in boxes and wanted every object included. Delia mentioned her work only when asked. By the time she left, the volunteer had made a note to review the folder at their next meeting.
Outside, Delia sat on a low wall and opened her orange notebook. She wrote a question rather than an exhibit description.
What would you keep if nobody else thought it mattered?
Beneath it she listed the objects in the case. Then she added the yellow colander and shut the notebook.
She ate lunch from a paper bag on the beach, guarding it from gulls, and spent the afternoon walking farther than she intended. At the end of the path she found a bench turned slightly away from the view. She sat there anyway. The wood was warm where the sun had reached it.
Her phone had no new messages.
She put it back in her pocket.
That evening Yasmin answered her call with, “I have six minutes and then I have to go into a meeting.”
“A meeting at this hour?”
“Exhibition planning. Apparently the children making art was only the beginning of our responsibilities.”
Delia told her about the collection, then stopped.
“What?” Yasmin said.
“Nothing.”
“That was a very shaped nothing.”
“I had coffee with someone.”
There was a brief silence, followed by a scraping sound.
“I’m moving away from the others. Who?”
“A man who runs the cinema.”
“Right.”
“You don’t have to sound so careful.”
“I don’t know which reaction you want.”
“Neither do I.”
Yasmin exhaled. “Did you enjoy it?”
“Yes. Then he had to leave for work, and I felt ridiculous.”
“Because you wanted him to stay?”
“Yes.”
“That seems fairly normal.”
Someone called Yasmin’s name in the background. She covered the phone, spoke away from it, then returned.
“I really do have to go. I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“Can I call tomorrow?”
“Of course.”
“Delia—”
“Go. I’m all right.”
Afterward, she washed her plate and left it to dry. The cottage was quiet. Through the window she could see the path she had walked that afternoon, empty now except for a person carrying a fishing rod.
Soren had written his number on the cinema schedule on Monday evening, saying to call if she couldn’t find the group. She took the paper from her jacket pocket and studied the digits.
She typed: I’ve reconsidered the film. I still want to know where he went.
Then she deleted still. It made the message sound like an accusation. She put it back because that was what she meant, and because editing nine words into perfection would not make sending them easier.
Her thumb hovered over the arrow.
She pressed it before she could delete anything else.