Maris arrived with a bag of plums and stood in the front doorway looking at the mirror.
“Well,” she said.
Claire put down the broom.
“I'll pay for it.”
“I hope so.”
She came no farther in. Her eyes traveled over the swept floor, the frame propped against the wall, the fitting corner where it had always stood.
“Was anyone hurt?”
“No.”
“Good. Tell me from outside. I don't trust your sweeping.”
They sat on the front step while Claire explained the part that could be explained. Graham bringing Vivian's things, trying to follow her, pushing Beth. She did not tell Maris about the image. That didn't feel like the first silence. It felt like deciding where to begin with a woman whose mirror she had broken, though she knew she had become good at finding distinctions.
Maris opened the bag of plums and offered one.
“Is he likely to come back?”
“I don't know.”
“Then don't pretend you do.”
Claire bit the plum. It was sour enough to make her jaw tighten.
“Beth should write down what happened,” Maris said. “Before everybody starts remembering it kindly.”
“She will.”
“And if he comes back using his hands instead of his words, I'm calling for help.”
Claire nodded. Maris had no wish to run anyone's marriage. She did have a building, customers, and a bag of fruit going soft in the heat. The mirror had belonged to her mother, she said, but her mother had hated it, which made Claire's guilt more complicated rather than less.
Evan came back before Beth. He looked into the studio, then down at the two women on the step.
“Should I ask?”
“Probably not,” Maris said.
He lifted the broken frame after checking the glass had been removed, and carried it into the yard for them. Maris watched his hands, said he ought to be careful of the splintered edge, and accepted his assurance that he worked with wood. Then Beth arrived with Vivian, and the women went inside together. Beth immediately found a piece of glass Claire had missed.
“That's the ten percent you still need,” Maris said.
The room filled with purposeful complaint. Beth swept. Vivian packed the samples onto a shelf that wasn't large enough for them. Maris declared the new mirror should be lighter and not reflect people's feet at an angle that made them look guilty. Claire helped until Beth told her, with genuine warmth, to go home.
Outside, Evan waited beside his car.
“They all right?” he asked.
“Not entirely.”
“No.”
He put his keys in his pocket. Claire realized he was waiting to see whether she would speak again.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
“Very.”
“I was going to cook.”
“That's ambitious.”
“It was going to involve eggs.”
“Those count.”
She looked at the car, then at him. “There's a place by the old ferry road. Fish. Chips. Terrible chairs.”
“Better than eggs.”
“You haven't had my eggs.”
“I heard your confidence.”
She smiled. “I'll buy.”
He didn't argue. They got into the car and drove out along the river, and Claire felt, absurdly, as though they had stolen an afternoon even though it was nearly evening and none of it had been easy.
At the place by the ferry road, the kitchen had run out of fish. They bought sausages and chips and sat at a table outside with the river on the far side of a low wall. The chairs were indeed terrible. Evan rocked once, found one short leg, and moved a little so his weight balanced it.
“Professional judgment?” Claire asked.
“Don't breathe.”
The laughter came too easily. She was still coming down from the mirror. Her sister had lifted an uninjured hand. The thought passed through her every few minutes, bright as a physical sensation.
Evan put salt on the chips, tasted one, added more. Claire stole a sausage from his plate because he had two and she had discovered hers was good.
“That's a younger-sister habit,” he said.
“Beth steals it back.”
“Sam used to take the best part and tell me he was checking it for poison.”
His voice faltered after the joke. He looked at the river.
“Still a useful service,” Claire said, quietly.
He nodded, and for a moment their pleasure sat beside the absence without erasing it. She had thought they would have to stop laughing whenever Sam entered the conversation. Evan ate another chip, frowned at the amount of salt, then pushed the plate toward her.
“You're the expert.”
“In poison?”
“Apparently.”
She took one. Too much salt. She ate it anyway.
The river was low, showing a strip of mud below the wall. A woman on the path walked a small white dog that resisted every few steps until she bent and lifted it, continuing with the same irritated pace. Claire watched the dog settle into being carried. Evan watched her watching it.
“Do you ever stop?” he asked.
“What?”
“Looking for something.”
“I don't have the camera.”
“That's not what I asked.”
She considered it. “I stop when someone notices.”
“Should I not have said?”
“No. You can say.”
He held her gaze a fraction longer than he had before. There was something in it she wanted without needing to interpret a photograph. She could feel the want in her body, warm and impractical. It had arrived in a chair with a short leg over sausages that tasted better than they ought to.
She asked about the boat work. He was fitting out a little cruiser for a woman who intended to live on it for part of the year. The owner wanted storage everywhere, but also wanted every space to remain open.
“I understand her,” Claire said.
“So do I. I can't build it.”
“Have you said that?”
“In more expensive words.”
He told her about a cupboard he had remade because the door opened the wrong way for the owner's shoulder, though it had looked fine on the drawing. He sounded different talking about work. The sentences became longer. His hand moved above the table, marking an invisible space, then he stopped because she was watching it.
“You like doing it,” she said.
“Most of it.”
“The parts nobody sees?”
“Those especially.”
She liked that answer more than she would have expected. She liked the way he put down his fork to explain, the little pause before a joke, his refusal to make the work sound grander than it was.
“Will you show me?” she asked.
“A cupboard?”
“Yes.”
“I was warned wedding photographers charged a lot. I didn't know they were this easy to entertain.”
She leaned back, laughing, then felt her chair shift and caught the edge of the table. He put a hand out before she fell, not quite touching her.
“Professional judgment,” he said. “Don't lean.”
They ate slowly. When the plates were empty, neither immediately suggested leaving. Claire watched a pair of teenagers trying to take a picture with the sunset behind them. Their faces would be dark. She remained seated.
“What made you keep quiet?” Evan asked.
She looked at him.
“The first one.”
He was not asking suddenly. It had been with him through the whole meal. She had simply enjoyed herself enough to forget that other things could be present at the same time.
“I was frightened,” she said.
“Of the picture.”
“Yes.”
“After you knew it wasn't just a picture?”
Claire folded the paper napkin into a smaller square. “Of what people would ask me.”
“What would they ask?”
“Where I got it. Where I was. Why I didn't tell anyone sooner. Whether I'd changed it. Whether I'd been there and was lying.”
He looked at the napkin, then at her.
“You thought they'd blame you.”
“I thought I could lose work. The house. Everything I knew how to do.”
“And that mattered more?”
“It was easier not to make it real,” she said.
Evan nodded once. “For you.”
“Yes.”
He was quiet. A waiter came to clear the plates, cheerfully asking if everything had been good. They both said yes. It had been.
“I can't tell you that's all right,” Evan said when the waiter had gone.
“No. I—” She looked at the empty plate.
“You looked like you might be.”
She swallowed. “I probably wanted you to.”
He looked toward the path, where the woman had put her dog down and resumed arguing with it. After a while he smiled faintly.
“You helped Beth today.”
“You did too.”
“That was real.”
She nodded.
On the drive back, he showed her the turning to the yard where he worked. She asked if he would be there tomorrow. He said most of the day. She said she might come by after photographing the studio fabrics.
At her house she left her hand on the open car door.
“Thank you for dinner,” he said.
“I didn't make it.”
“I know.”
He smiled, and she knew he meant the rest too. She could have leaned into the car and kissed him. She thought he might have let her. But she wanted to arrive there without the relief of today carrying her, and perhaps he did as well.
“Tomorrow,” she said.
“All right.”
Inside, she opened the mirror image again. Beth's hand remained trapped. The old file hadn't changed; her sister's afternoon had.
Claire closed it and went to bed smiling before she meant to.