The week before Merefield went quickly enough that Lena could nearly pretend she wasn't waiting for Sunday.
The big café lunch had already gone well. The new flowers stayed undecided. Daniel took her to buy a frame for the rental-gate drawing, then spent an evening hanging it where the crooked wall made every straight line look wrong.
On Saturday he went fishing with Pete. Lena worked, finished the close and found a fish wrapped in paper in the fridge when she got home. Daniel had asked Jo how to cook it. Jo had apparently given him three instructions and told him not to call her halfway through.
They ate it with potatoes. It was good. Lena wanted that fact to travel with her the next morning, not become something she left at the station.
Daniel drove her there on Sunday.
“What time back?” he asked.
“Early evening, if everything goes right.”
He nodded. She kissed him through the open window before going to the platform. She didn't want a guilty little kiss, so she stayed long enough to mean it.
On the train she opened the paperback Nate had returned. She hadn't read it in years. By the third page she remembered the whole ending. She shut it and looked out instead.
Merefield was an hour inland, warmer than Greyhaven, with wide streets and no smell of salt. Nate met her outside the theatre in a work shirt with one sleeve rolled higher than the other.
He looked pleased before he managed to look careful.
“You came.”
“I bought a ticket. It seemed wasteful not to.”
He laughed. “I meant for the show, not the train.”
“I bought both.”
“Very organised.”
“Don't tell Jo.”
He took her into the foyer. On the wall were photographs of old productions, faces in elaborate hats looking desperately toward people just outside the frame. A woman behind the ticket desk waved at Nate and asked whether he'd eaten yet.
“Working on it,” he said.
“Work faster.”
Lena smiled. It was nice to hear someone speak to him with no interest in their past.
He showed her only a little of the backstage area, enough for her to understand where he spent the day. No lesson about lights. No performance of important work. He stepped aside for a woman carrying costumes and held a door when somebody called for him to do it.
A man at the far end shouted, “Nate, your lunch has escaped.”
A paper bag lay on the floor beside a stack of boxes.
Nate picked it up and looked inside. “Still mostly alive.”
Lena made a face.
“Let's buy something better,” he said. “I've got a bit before the next check.”
Outside he asked where she wanted to eat. Not what he had arranged. She was so aware of the difference that she nearly chose nothing to avoid making too much of it.
“That one,” she said, pointing to a little place with an uneven row of tables in the shade.
They ordered sandwiches and lemonade. Nate put his phone beside his glass, face up.
“If it goes, I have to answer,” he said.
“I know. I'm not pretending this is your day off.”
He looked relieved. She liked being able to make something easy for him.
He asked about the café, about how much of it was her job and how much was what Jo assumed she would do because they were sisters. Lena answered honestly enough to surprise herself.
“I like knowing things will work because I was there,” she said. “I don't like being the last person allowed to leave.”
“Have you told her?”
“She'd say she leaves after me.”
“Does she?”
“Usually.”
He smiled. “That sounds difficult to argue with.”
Lena laughed. “You see my problem.”
She told him about the garden lunch, about learning she could not promise a room away just because she felt confused. He didn't make fun of her. He told her about a theatre where somebody had promised two different groups the same dressing room, and how both groups believed a technician had the power to create another one.
She could imagine him there. Not an exciting distant boy; a man standing in a corridor trying to finish a day everybody had made harder.
“Do you like all the moving?” she asked.
“Some. I like having my own place more than I used to.”
“You didn't want one then.”
“I wanted one in theory. With a door I could keep going through.”
She looked at him.
“That wasn't fair to you,” he added.
“No.”
They let the old thing stand beside the new conversation without spending the whole meal turning toward it.
When his phone went, he answered and said he'd be there in ten minutes. Lena finished her sandwich while he listened. She watched how his face changed when he was thinking about something other than what she thought of him.
“I've got to go back,” he said.
“Go. I want to look round.”
“I can show you—”
“No. I promised.”
He stood, then hesitated. “There's a footbridge behind the square. You might like it.”
She smiled. “That's better. Information instead of a tour.”
He nodded and left her there with the last of the lemonade.
The bridge crossed a narrow river lined with shops. Lena bought a pencil from a stationer's because the one in her bag had lost its point. She sat on a bench, drew part of the bridge and discovered she liked the town more when nobody was asking her to like it.
She went into a little bookshop and came out with a cheap notebook. Not for the wedding. It had blank pages and a dull green cover. She didn't send a picture of it to anybody.
At three she watched the show. Nate was nowhere to be seen. That was his work: things happened and most people didn't look for the man making them happen. The play was funny in a broad, cheerful way that made the couple beside her laugh before the lines were finished. Lena laughed with them. She forgot to wonder about anything for several minutes at a time.
Afterward Nate found her by the ticket desk.
“Did you hate it?”
“I bought another notebook.”
He looked confused.
“No, I liked it. Even the man with the enormous moustache.”
“Especially him.”
“Fine. Especially him.”
He had a little more than an hour before the evening work. They walked to the river. He tried to guess which part she'd drawn, failed and finally asked to see it.
She showed him. He studied the page longer than she expected.
“That's good,” he said.
“You don't have to.”
“I don't.”
He handed it back. They stood close enough that her sleeve touched his. She could smell soap and warm cotton on him, not the jacket she'd remembered. She looked at his mouth and made herself look away.
He saw it. Neither spoke.
A dog ran past them carrying a stick so long it struck Nate's ankle. He made a startled sound, and Lena laughed before she could decide whether laughing was fair.
“Dangerous town,” she said.
“I tried to warn you.”
He rubbed his ankle, grinning. Then his phone rang.
She knew what it meant before he answered.