On Monday morning Lena tried to describe Merefield without making it either better or worse than it had been.
Daniel sat at the table with his work diary open. He listened while she told him about the play, the bridge, the delayed train. Then he asked where Nate had been when she waited.
“Working. Then we had soup.”
“Just soup?”
She looked at him.
He put his pen down. “That sounded awful.”
“A little.”
“I'm trying.”
She nodded. “He couldn't stop working because I was there. I got annoyed. I shouldn't have.”
Daniel watched her for a moment. “You sound impressed he didn't stop.”
“I'm not impressed by everything he does.”
“No. But you're thinking about everything he does.”
That landed. She looked down at her cup.
“Some of yesterday was nice,” she said. “Some was hard. His life isn't what I'd choose for myself.”
“Would you choose it for him?”
“I don't know.”
He leaned back. She wished she could take the answer back, but it was too late to replace it with a useful lie.
“I want to be here,” she said. “With you.”
“Then be here.”
His voice wasn't raised. He sounded tired of waiting for a person sitting three feet away.
She reached across the table. “I'm trying as well.”
He took her hand, but neither felt comforted by it.
At work she made a good start, opening before Jo arrived. The early shift she'd traded for the music evening had gone well the week before, and she'd offered to do this one too. The café smelled of coffee and warm bread by the time her sister came in. Jo stopped at the door, looked around, then smiled.
“Look at that. I have an employee.”
“You have a sister with your keys.”
“Even more dangerous.”
Lena enjoyed the praise enough that she felt almost ashamed of how much she'd resented the early morning trade. Then she was busy, with no room to punish herself further.
Daniel arrived after lunch carrying a flat cardboard box.
“What have you bought?” she asked.
“A lamp. For the small room.”
Their second room held laundry, his unused exercise weights, spare café jars and a little desk Lena couldn't reach because the drying rack was usually in front of it. They called it the small room as if it had no purpose either had chosen.
“You wanted somewhere to draw,” he said.
“Yes.”
“And I've been taking over the table with invoices. We could sort it. Give us both somewhere.”
She touched the corner of the box.
“Tonight?”
“I'll move the rack tonight. We can fit the desk before Friday.”
She carried the box behind the counter so nobody would knock it.
At home they began with the drying rack. Daniel carried it into the kitchen while Lena removed a pile of jars she had forgotten belonged to Jo. They found two single socks, a receipt for something neither remembered buying and the old exercise sheet Daniel had insisted he would follow every morning.
“Did you?” she asked, holding it up.
“For three mornings. They were excellent mornings.”
She laughed and put it beside the weights rather than in the bin. He looked grateful.
They tried the desk by the window, but the chair caught the cupboard door. Daniel moved it to the opposite wall. Lena sat down and turned the chair toward the light.
From here she could reach the cupboard and see outside. She pictured the green notebook open on the surface.
Daniel plugged in the new lamp. Warm light fell over the desk.
“Good?”
“Yes.”
He came behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. She leaned back against him.
“We can do the rest Friday,” he said.
“Yes.”
She turned in the chair and drew him down for a kiss. He stayed close, smiling against her mouth when the chair creaked.
Later, folding the last laundry in the kitchen, she found a grey shirt that was his and not Nate's, that had always been his. She pressed it briefly against her face, then put it in the right pile.