Daniel didn't ask anything else about Nate that night.
Instead he put on the programme they usually watched together, then missed enough of it that Lena had to explain why the man on screen was pretending to be somebody's uncle.
“I'm not keeping up,” he said.
“I noticed.”
He turned the sound down. “Did you enjoy seeing him?”
Lena put her feet on the floor. “It wasn't arranged.”
“That isn't what I asked.”
She thought of the cleaned tables, the sandwich with its corners, Nate accepting that her weekend had been good.
“For a bit. Yes.”
Daniel nodded. She hated feeling rewarded for not telling a softer version.
“He's still who he was,” Daniel said.
“Parts of him.”
“Big parts.”
“I'm not forgetting what he did.”
“I didn't say you were.”
“No. But you wanted to.”
He leaned back against the sofa. “Can you blame me?”
Lena's anger thinned. She could blame him for plenty this week. She couldn't blame him for finding this difficult.
She moved nearer and took his hand. He looked at their fingers together.
“I came home,” she said.
He turned toward her. “I know.”
She didn't add a promise she couldn't make cleanly. He let her rest against him, and after a while he turned the sound up again.
On Tuesday afternoon he picked her up from work. She had a bag of vegetables from Jo and the drawing she'd made at the rental, which she'd put in her work bag to keep it flat. Daniel reached to take the bag, then left her holding it when his phone rang.
He glanced at the screen.
“It's the contract,” he said.
Lena knew which contract. A big renovation inland, twelve weeks of work with a firm he'd helped once before. He had shown her photographs of the place when the possibility first came up. He liked complicated jobs that still ended in something people could live in. He liked the pay as well. They had talked about replacing his van before it began choosing which mornings to start.
He answered, standing beside her on the quay.
She could hear only his half, but the change in his voice told her the offer was real. He asked about the crew, then the start date.
“After that week? Right. Yes, that's better.”
He looked at Lena.
It would start after the honeymoon. The timing they'd worried about had been changed. She saw that much plainly.
For several seconds he listened, one hand on his hip.
“Can I call you back?”
He ended the call before setting a time.
“They want you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“That's good.”
“They've shifted the start. We'd already be home.”
She nodded. “You said the rate was good.”
“Better than the local work. And enough hours to make it worth staying.”
The water beside them was flat and grey. A small boat thumped against its rope. Lena imagined him away for three months, her first married mornings beginning at the café while he woke somewhere she hadn't seen.
She wanted to say he shouldn't go. She also remembered Sunday in the car, his fear of every day being decided for him.
“What do you want to do?” she asked.
He looked at her so directly she wondered whether she'd asked a trick question without meaning to.
“I don't want to spend the beginning of our marriage coming home when somebody else tells me I can.”
“You could come weekends.”
“Some. If the job's going well.”
She knew it was harder than that. He'd explained the long days before, the distance, the cost of travelling back simply to sleep and leave again. Still, she wanted him to hear her leave a door open.
“You were excited about it,” she said.
“Yes.”
He watched a gull land on the rail. She thought of Nate, his ridiculous careers for birds, and looked away at once. Daniel saw the movement but not the thought.
“Yesterday,” he said, “you told me he finished something. As if that surprised you.”
“It did.”
“I finish things for us every day.”
“I didn't say you don't.”
“No. You don't say it.”
The words weren't cruel. They were tired, hurt in a place she hadn't seen clearly enough.
She touched his arm. “I notice, Daniel.”
He shook his head once. “I don't want to disappear while you remember him.”
She almost said this is your fault. Part of it was. But he was standing beside her being jealous, being afraid, being the man who still came to collect her vegetables after work. It wasn't the moment to make an exact division of blame.
“If you want the contract, take it,” she said. “I'm not going to tell you it means you don't love me.”
He looked down at her hand on his sleeve.
“I've got enough work here.”
“Not the same money.”
“No.”
He took out his phone and called back before she could decide whether to stop him.
“Thanks for waiting,” he said. “I'm going to pass this time.”
He listened. His mouth tightened briefly.
“No. I understand. Give it to someone who can commit to it.”
When he ended the call, he didn't look proud. He looked as though he'd put something down that had been heavier than he expected.
Lena stayed beside him.
“You don't have to do that because of Nate.”
“I did it because of us.”
She wanted to believe him. This time he had given her something she could see: an actual wanted job he would not have. It wasn't a sentence she had waited out of him on the sofa.
He called a local builder next, confirming the run of smaller work he'd been holding loosely. Dates, houses, ordinary arrangements. Nothing dramatic. He would be here.
On the drive home Lena asked him to stop at the bakery. She bought the expensive little lemon cakes he never chose for himself and put the box on his lap.
“You'll get crumbs everywhere,” he said.
“Good. Then somebody will know we had a nice time.”
He laughed, a small release. At the flat she kissed him before he set the box down.
She had been thinking of the invitation as a stupid attempt to clear old hurt away. Now she wondered whether he had wanted her to see both men together in her life, to compare them, to choose him properly. He had said long enough for her to be sure. Perhaps he had been afraid she wasn't.
She didn't like that he had arranged it. She did like that he was still here, with a job he had wanted going to somebody else.
They ate one cake standing up, sharing it from the paper case. He got icing on his thumb. She kissed it away.
For the first time since Nate returned, she felt there might be something she could do, instead of another thing she had to ask.