She spent the morning making the house unsuitable for a stranger.
The bedroom door was shut. The white shirt was in the laundry basket. She moved a packet of plasters from the bathroom to the kitchen, then wondered why she had done it and put them back. The front door was locked. She had always locked it at night, less reliably when she was working. At ten she checked it again.
There was a desk and a sofa downstairs. Anyone who came to the house could remain there. Her upstairs room was not a destination to which a person might drift by accident. Someone would have to climb the stairs with her. She would have to let him.
At noon she ate cereal because she hadn't remembered breakfast and couldn't bear another meal that required making. Beth had sent a message saying she would come later in the afternoon. No time. Claire began asking for one and stopped. Her sister had already agreed to come.
The photograph remained open on the computer, except when she closed it to assure herself she could. In that case she remembered every part of it more precisely.
Shortly after one there was a knock at the front door.
Claire stood very still in the kitchen. It might be a delivery. A neighbor. Someone who had lost a cat. The list exhausted itself before the second knock.
Through the frosted upper pane she saw a broad shape, dark hair, the shoulder of a gray shirt. She knew.
She had time to choose not to open the door.
Instead she slid the bolt back.
He stood on the path with both hands empty. In life his face was less still than it had been in the photograph. His jaw moved as he prepared to speak, and a crease appeared beside his mouth. He looked tired. Not the kind of tired Claire felt after a wedding. Something that had been living in his body longer than a day.
“Claire Rowan?”
She nodded.
“I'm Evan Hart. I called, but I think you were out.”
She had let two calls go yesterday while working. She hadn't checked the messages. Now she remembered a voice she had barely listened to before putting down the phone.
“I got your name from the Alder Rooms,” he said. “They said you photographed the wedding last Saturday. Vivian Vale's.”
“Yes.”
“My brother worked there that day. Sam Hart.”
Claire tightened her hand on the edge of the door.
He watched her for a moment. “You heard?”
“I read the report.”
He nodded as though she had provided something useful, a way past explaining the death. Up close his gray shirt had a tiny triangle missing from the cuff. He wore no watch. She noticed this because she was looking anywhere except directly at his face, which she knew too well and not at all.
“I wondered if he was in any of your pictures.”
“He is.”
The answer came out before she could decide whether to give it. Evan's eyes lifted to hers.
“You remember?”
“I found one while editing.”
“Could I see it?”
She stood aside.
He stepped into the hall and looked down at the rug, perhaps wondering whether to take off his shoes. Claire closed the door behind him.
“In here,” she said.
He followed her into the client room. The sample albums lay square on the shelf, the cushions placed at the ends of the sofa. She gestured toward it, but he remained standing beside the desk.
Claire closed the house photograph before turning the screen. The movement felt so obvious that she expected him to ask what she was hiding. He was looking at a framed photograph on the wall, a laughing couple with their heads together in rain. It was the picture most clients liked, until they asked whether she would still photograph them if it rained, in a tone that suggested the weather was among her subcontractors.
“Tea?” she asked.
“No, thank you.”
She opened the ordinary wedding image with Sam and the folding table. Evan bent a little to see it.
“There he is.”
It was an odd thing to say about a dead man. Utterly ordinary, as though Sam had been concealed behind the table and Evan had finally found him.
“I can send you a copy,” Claire said.
“Yes. Please.”
She moved the image larger, keeping the whole composition visible. Vivian remained at the door in the background. Evan's attention stopped there.
“She's looking at him.”
“I thought so.”
“Did they speak?”
“I don't know.”
She had said it too quickly. Evan glanced at her, then back at the screen.
“He told me he was helping with the setup. Some of the evening too, if they needed him. He said it was easy money.”
Claire searched further through the earlier files. She found a wide shot of the terrace that included Sam by a cart of folded chairs. Then another, taken a few minutes later, in which he held out both arms and a woman in an apron appeared to be scolding him. His face was open in laughter.
Evan let out a breath.
“That's better.”
“You know the woman?”
“No. But I know what he's doing.”
“What?”
“Making someone else carry his end.”
Claire smiled, cautiously. He did too, then stopped. It was as though the joke had taken him to a place that no longer existed and left him there.
“Sorry,” she said.
“No.” He straightened. “You didn't do it.”
She looked down at the keyboard.
He asked for the second picture as well. She copied his email address from a note he had made on his phone, getting him to spell the part before the at sign. He repeated it, a little more slowly, with the patience of a person who wanted something enough to endure the process. At the end she offered to make a print.
“How much?”
“Nothing.”
“You're working.”
“A print is easy.”
She wanted to do something for him that was simple and decent and didn't require the service-road picture to enter the room. She could put Sam's laughter on paper. She could let Evan hold that.
He looked at the empty sofa again. “Is it all right if I sit?”
“Of course.”
She brought water because she couldn't remain motionless beside him. When she returned, he was leaning forward with his hands loose between his knees. The room had acquired him. It was no longer a place where people came to choose how a happy day should be remembered.
“Was he the younger one?” she asked.
“Five years.”
“My sister's seven younger.”
“Does she mention it?”
“Only when I'm right about something.”
His smile returned for longer this time.
“Sam said I was born thirty. He was going to remain twenty-six until I apologized.”
“Did you?”
“Not adequately.”
He drank the water, watching the wall while he did. Claire sat on the desk chair rather than beside him. There was enough space between them to make the room innocent. She could feel herself measuring it.
“What does your sister do?”
“Clothes. Styling. Alterations. She's opening a studio.”
“And she's seven years younger, so she needs all your advice.”
“Apparently not.”
“Terrible news.”
He could be funny. She had not seen that in the photograph. She had seen his mouth, his shoulders, the fact of him in her bedroom. Now his humor made her want to keep him here, which was precisely what she had spent the morning trying to prevent.
“What did Sam do?”
“What didn't he do.” Evan rubbed a thumb along the side of the glass. “Removals. Kitchens for a while. Venue work. He could make himself useful anywhere for two weeks.”
“And then?”
“Then there was something else he wanted.”
He said it fondly and with weariness, the two things so close Claire couldn't tell where one ended. She had heard parents talk about their living children like that. She had never thought about how the complaint would remain after the person was gone.
“He used to work with me,” Evan said. “Boat interiors. Fitting cupboards and bunks. He liked doing the parts people saw. Didn't much care for the rest.”
“That's most people.”
“Yes. He was most people very enthusiastically.”
Claire laughed. He lowered his head for a moment, smiling into the glass. When he looked up again his eyes were wet, though the rest of his face hadn't moved toward crying.
She wanted to touch him. Not because of tomorrow's image; she was sure of that, then less sure. She put her hands flat on her knees.
“Was he a friend of Vivian's?”
Evan looked back at the computer.
“They were together. Before Graham.”
Claire thought of the bride's response to him at the door. The pale trousers on the road. She could now make the most ordinary explanation for why two people might have been in that place together, and it did not make the picture easier to bear.
“Did she know he'd be working there?”
“I don't know. He hadn't told me it was her wedding.”
“You think she saw him afterward?”
“I think she might have.”
Evan put the glass down on the little table without a coaster. Claire noticed and left it there.
“I've tried calling her. No answer. I don't want to frighten her. I just want to know when she last saw him.”
“Have you told the police?”
“That he worked there? That they used to be together? Yes.” He looked at her directly. “I'm not asking you to find out what happened. I wanted a picture.”
He wanted a picture of a man he loved. She had one and was not showing it to him.
“I know her a little,” she said. “Beth knows her better.”
“Your sister?”
“She helped with the dress. They want to work together.”
“Would she speak to me?”
“I can't answer for her.”
He nodded. It ought to have been the end of the conversation. She could send the two ordinary pictures and let him leave. Upstairs would remain untouched. Beth would come later and Claire could tell her everything, which would be easier without Sam's brother there to hear it.
Instead she said, “I could come with you.”
“To Vivian's?”
“If you're going to ask.”
He regarded her as if the offer was unexpected. She realized that it was. People gave a stranger water and a print. They didn't usually volunteer the rest of their Sunday.
“Are you sure?”
She looked toward the hall. The stair was beyond it, the bedroom door firmly shut.
“Let me get my shoes.”