Elena went to the door.
Miles did not move. She had to stand close to him, close enough to see the little scrape on his jaw from the dock. He smelled of clean damp cloth and the tea they had drunk. That made what she was doing harder. She wished it had not.
“Step back,” she said.
“Don't close it.”
“I can open it again.”
“You don't know that.”
She put a hand on the door. His palm was on the frame above hers. For a moment neither pushed. From behind her Daniel said her name in the quiet tone he used when he wanted her to come to bed.
“You agreed to this,” she told Miles.
He looked at her as if she had struck him again. “Eleven years ago.”
“You had them.”
“Elena.”
“I've had nine years without him.”
He took his hand off the frame. She might have stopped then. She could see the hall, the ordinary kitchen, the chair where his sweatshirt had dried. There was no force pressing her through the doorway, no hand on hers moving the bolt.
She shut the door and locked it.
Miles hit it once, with the flat of his hand. The sound came clearly through the wood. Elena kept her fingers on the brass.
“Open it.”
She looked back at Daniel. He stood beside the sofa, waiting. She wanted him to say that this was wrong. She wanted him to tell her to open the door and then remain anyway. Instead he held out his hand.
Elena went to him.
Outside Miles said something she could not make out. The fire crackled loudly enough to cover the end of it. She sat with Daniel and let him put his arm around her. Her cheek rested against his shirt.
“I'm not staying,” she said. “I just want this.”
He kissed her hair. “I know.”
She asked whether he remembered a rainy week when they went to the coast and the guesthouse charged extra for towels. He did. He remembered the fish they ate on a wall, the gull that took half his lunch, the blister on her heel that she concealed until they were two miles from the car. He remembered all of it. She wanted him to keep saying things she recognized until the terrible blank where the first anniversary had been grew small enough to ignore.
The room widened around them. Beyond the sitting-room window she saw their old street, lit by late afternoon. A woman wheeled a bicycle past. Rain moved on the pavement. Elena could stand here and watch weather from a home that no longer existed. Daniel drew a blanket over her legs.
“You used to steal it,” she said.
“I was cold.”
“So was I.”
He put both ends over her now, keeping none for himself. She disliked the perfection of it and was too grateful to object.
Miles knocked again. This time the knocks were lower, near the lock. “There's water.”
Elena sat up.
Daniel touched her shoulder. “He knows why he's here.”
“He said it would start.”
“You haven't asked for anything he didn't promise.”
She listened. Water ran in the hall, a thin rushing sound at first, then a heavier one. Miles said her name. She put the blanket aside and got up.
The room at the far end had become their bedroom at home. She could see the bedside lamp, the chipped green bowl where Daniel kept coins, her own scarf on the chair. The bed was turned down on her side. He came behind her and put his hands at her waist.
She closed her eyes. It had been years since anyone held her there without learning where her body began. She wanted to go into that bedroom. She wanted to put her clothes on the chair and wake beside him, complain about his elbow, hear him ask if she wanted tea. She wanted it so badly she had to bite her lip to keep from making a sound.
Then Miles screamed.
Daniel's hands tightened. Elena stepped out of them and went to the door.
The scream had stopped. From the other side came a scraping sound, and Miles breathing in short, broken bursts. The brass bolt was hot beneath her fingers, though there was no fire near it.
“What happened?” she called.
“Open it.”
She pulled the bolt. It did not move. She pulled harder, then used both hands. Behind her Daniel said it would be easier if she came away.
“Move the bolt,” she said to him.
“It's your door.”
She turned. His face was calm. In the hall Miles made another noise, a groan he was trying not to let become a scream. Elena reached for the door handle and twisted it until it hurt her wrist.
Something white slid beneath the door. She thought of the flowers on the honeymoon dress. This was thicker, a little rectangle of card. It stopped against her foot.
She picked it up. A handwritten sign read SOUP UNTIL THREE. It smelled of coffee.
Behind the door a woman began to laugh.
Miles said, “No. Not that. Don't.”
Water pressure had bowed the door inward and twisted its frame. The bolt still held in its keeper, but the wood had pulled a finger's width away from the jamb below it. Elena put her eye to that gap. The hall beyond was full of warm yellow light. Water lay over a tiled floor that belonged to no room in this house.
From the hall, Miles had pushed his right fingers through the split, reaching for the bolt on Elena's side. The door bulged farther toward her; its edge tightened on his knuckles. Elena saw the pale fingers bend as the gap narrowed, and Miles screamed again.
“Daniel,” she said, with a voice unlike her own. “Help me.”
He stood beside the bed she had wanted to enter. His mouth moved, but she did not hear him. The woman in the hall laughed again, and Miles pleaded with someone Elena could not see to keep the door shut against the rain.