Bea opened the front door with a piece of toast in her hand.
“Don't say anything,” she said. “I know.”
There was a white ribbon stuck to her cheek. Her hair had escaped its clip, and something green was caught in the neck of her T-shirt.
“You look lovely,” I said.
“I'm feeding you, so try again.”
She pulled me inside before I could put my bag down. I hugged her with one arm, my suitcase tipping against my leg. She smelled of butter and the damp leaves she brought home from work.
For a moment I was just happy.
I hadn't been inside this house for eleven months. I'd moved to Ruth's at seventeen because every plan to go out had become another fight with Mother. I'd seen Bea plenty of times. She had come to Aunt Ruth's when I lived there, then out to the coast during my summer job. We spoke on the phone. She sent me pictures of bouquets and asked whether a rose looked expensive or merely ill.
But standing in our old hallway with her arms around me felt different. I had come back for something good. My sister was getting married on Saturday, and for once nobody had asked me home to discuss my attitude.
“Let go,” I said. “Your toast is in my hair.”
She drew back and checked it. “Still edible.”
“My hair?”
“We'll see how hungry you get.”
She took my bag and dragged it toward the stairs. The ribbon stayed on her cheek.
“That's deliberate, is it?” I asked, pointing.
She peeled it off. “Trial makeup. Very modern.”
The hall table had disappeared under little glass jars. White ribbon hung from the banister. Through the kitchen door I could see our mother standing at the counter with a notebook and a ruler.
“Lucy,” Mother said. “You're early.”
“The bus was on time. I tried to explain that it would upset you.”
Bea made a noise that was almost a cough.
Mother looked over my shoulder at the case. “You could have asked someone to collect you.”
“I got here.”
I didn't want to begin the week with a fight, so I stepped forward and kissed her cheek. She touched my upper arm, then held me back to look at me.
“You've caught the sun.”
“There was quite a lot of it at the seaside.”
“Well, we must be careful with the photographs. Bea, get her something to eat.”
“Already done,” Bea said.
On the kitchen table stood a plate of toast cut into triangles. Cheese had melted over the edges, and the middle held little slices of tomato. Bea had removed the seeds. I used to complain about the slippery bit when we were little, which she still regarded as a sensible food preference rather than evidence I had been a dreadful child.
There was a mug beside it. My old yellow one, with the handle glued back on.
“You kept this?” I asked.
“Of course. You can't expect me to drink from it.”
I sat down and ate a triangle. It was hot enough to hurt.
“Good?” she asked.
I nodded with my mouth full.
“Excellent. You can wash jars when you've finished.”
“I thought I was a treasured guest.”
“You are. We let the other guests wash them hungry.”
Mother drew a line in her notebook. She had decided to hold the wedding in the garden, with about thirty people, hired chairs and a lunch under a canopy. When Bea first told me, I'd pictured something small and relaxed. Mother had apparently pictured an event at which somebody would inspect the distance between the knives.
“Nathan's bringing the rest from the shop,” Bea said. “We can do the flowers here this afternoon.”
Nathan. The man I hadn't met.
Bea had got engaged in May. The photograph she sent was mostly her hand, with the ring sparkling beside a bunch of pink flowers. Mother's post showed Bea holding up the same hand. No groom in either picture.
I'd asked Bea to send one of them together. She'd said she would, and then we had talked about the terrible wallpaper in the guesthouse corridor. I hadn't chased her for it. I barely used my own social accounts anymore; after a day of answering guests, I liked being able to put the phone down. When Bea visited, she came alone, and I liked having her to myself.
I'd imagined a stranger. Somebody who made her laugh and took the wet stems out of the sink without being asked. Somebody I could like because she did.
“Is he nervous?” I asked.
“About the wedding?” Bea straightened the plate in front of me. “A bit.”
“About meeting me. I can be very impressive.”
“You've got cheese on your chin.”
I wiped it off. “That's how I begin.”
She smiled, but her hand stayed on the edge of the plate until Mother asked her for the shop receipt.
I ate another triangle and looked out at the garden. The old wooden bench was still under the wall. The washing line had gone. Mother had wanted it moved for years, and apparently getting a daughter married had finally justified the trouble.
My phone buzzed with a message from Ruth asking whether I had arrived. I sent her a yes and a picture of the toast.
She replied, Save some for the driver on Monday.
Next Monday she was taking me back to the coast. I had accepted a permanent job at the guesthouse, with a little room upstairs that would be mine. I would start on August thirty-first. Bea had called it my grand establishment and offered to help find curtains. I had bought a secondhand lamp instead. Curtains could wait. I wanted to turn a light on in a room nobody else could rearrange.
“Ruth says hello,” I told them.
“Ask whether she can bring the serving dishes tomorrow,” Mother said.
Bea nudged the last piece of toast toward me. “Eat that before she assigns it a job.”
A car stopped outside. Bea looked up immediately.
“That'll be him.”
She left the kitchen. I heard the front door, a man's voice, then Bea laughing at something he said.
I put my mug down.
I knew that laugh too, although it wasn't Bea's. It came a second later, low and a little breathless, as if the joke had surprised the person who made it.
He walked through the door carrying a bucket of flowers.
Nate.
His hair was shorter. He had a pale line across one knuckle and shoulders that filled his blue shirt better than they had two summers ago. The rest was the same. His crooked right eyebrow. His mouth. The small pause when he saw me.
“Nate?”
He stopped with the bucket against his thigh.
At sixteen, I had waited beside the river for that face. He had been seventeen, staying with a cousin while he did a summer placement, and always arrived with something to tell me: a seized bolt, a disastrous sandwich, a dog that had stolen somebody's glove. Once we'd kissed on the bench until I forgot my ice cream. He'd noticed it running over my hand and rescued the cone, laughing against my cheek.
He had been moving an hour away at the end of August. We'd planned weekend visits. Mother hadn't liked the plan, but I had thought that was a problem we could manage.
Then his message had arrived.
I got your message. Fine. Goodbye, Lucy.
I hadn't understood what message he meant. I called once, standing at the bottom of these same stairs. The call didn't go through. Mother told me he had telephoned her that morning to say it was over. She said I shouldn't humiliate myself by chasing him.
So I hadn't.
I'd cried on Bea's bed with my face turned toward the wall. She had stroked my hair and stayed until I fell asleep.
Now she put her hand on his back.
“Lucy, this is Nathan.”
He looked straight at me. I waited for my name to change his face. For embarrassment, anger, anything I could recognise.
“Hello, Lucy,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”
Mother took the bucket from him and complained pleasantly about the weight.
Bea's hand remained on his back. The ring caught the light as she turned toward me.
This was the man she was marrying.
And he had just told my sister we had never met.