On Monday Beth asked for a photograph of the sample card left at the studio.
Claire read the message twice. It had no greeting, but it was not a warning or a refusal either. A request for something she could do. She took the studio key from its hook and walked over before deciding whether to reply.
The room smelled faintly of new paint and the soup Maris kept reheating upstairs. Without Beth in it, the work looked interrupted. A line of pins waited through the red sample dress. Ruth's empty bag hung on a hook; the dress had gone home Friday, one piece of work completed while everything else remained open.
Claire found the card in a folder beneath a sketch. It showed little swatches of plain fabric with numbers written beside them. She laid it by the window and took a phone picture, then another closer one because the numbers hadn't been clear.
Beth answered quickly.
Could you put the red sample beside the blue? Need to see them together.
Claire did. She wanted to ask what they were making, whether Vivian had decided to keep the line, whether the woman they stayed with liked sewing. Instead she sent the photograph and waited.
The phone rang.
“That blue looks gray,” Beth said.
“It is a little gray.”
“In real life or in your picture?”
“Both. I can move it.”
“By the white wall.”
Claire rearranged the samples. Beth stayed on the call, asking her to lift one corner, put it down, turn another. Claire held the phone away from her ear and took a picture, then brought it back to hear her sister saying something she had missed.
“What?”
“I said the cheap one's better.”
“I agree.”
“Vivian doesn't.”
“Vivian's there?”
“Yes.”
Claire waited. She could hear a voice behind Beth's, too quiet to make out. Beth laughed once, a sudden unguarded sound. The women were doing something together. It hurt Claire to be excluded and relieved her to know the work could still happen.
“Tell her I like the expensive one too,” Claire said. “The cheap one's just not ugly.”
Beth relayed it. There was another murmur.
“She says that's exactly its problem.”
Claire laughed. “She's impossible.”
“Sometimes.”
The reply held more than the fabric. Claire left it alone.
“Will you come back for the preview?” she asked.
“We're deciding.”
“It's Saturday.”
“I can read a calendar.”
“I know. I just—”
Beth sighed. Claire heard it and stopped.
“Maris has been looking at lamps,” Claire said instead.
“Tell her no gold tassels.”
“She'll be devastated.”
“That's why she has you to comfort her.”
For a moment the call became easy. Claire described the new mirror and the one remaining letter on the wall. Beth said she was still keeping the S, even if no one understood it. Then she said she had to go.
“Do you need anything else?” Claire asked.
“Keep the sample card where we can find it.”
“I will.”
“Thank you.”
They hung up. Claire put the card on the table, not back in the folder, and wrote SAMPLE CARD on a piece of paper beneath it. She knew this was excessive. She also knew Beth would laugh at it, which gave the small act a purpose she wanted.
Graham was outside her house when she returned.
He stood near the rosemary pot with his phone in his hand. His van was parked a little farther along. He looked at the studio key as she put it into her bag.
“They're not there,” he said.
“I know.”
“Where are they?”
“I don't know.”
“Claire.”
“I don't.”
“Beth would tell you.”
She almost smiled. “You'd think so.”
He looked toward the house, the upstairs window, then back at her. “Is she with him?”
“Vivian's with Beth.”
“And Evan?”
“Not with them.”
The certainty soothed something in Graham's face. Claire resented having soothed it, though she had no reason to lie.
“I need to speak to her,” he said.
“She has a phone.”
“She won't answer.”
“Then she doesn't want to.”
“You don't know what she wants.”
“Tell her I need to speak,” he said. “That's all.”
“She knows.”
“The business can't wait forever.”
“You can tell her that yourself.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “You enjoyed it. Didn't you.”
“What?”
“Knowing what was coming.”
Claire held her keys tightly enough to feel an edge in her palm. She didn't answer. He had seen the mirror break; he had seen a picture of a meeting he'd stopped. The question reached something she didn't want him to recognize.
“You didn't know this,” he said.
“No.”
“Neither did I.”
For a second he sounded simply abandoned. Then he put the phone in his pocket and asked where Beth's former coworker lived. Claire hadn't mentioned a coworker. Vivian or Beth must have told him something earlier, an ordinary possibility she could not turn into a map.
“I don't know,” she said again.
He left without coming inside. She waited until the van had gone before unlocking the door.
Evan came that evening with bread and a bag of tomatoes. She asked him whether he always had those, and he said he'd been buying things he knew how to eat. There was something tired in the joke.
He had worked all day but finished less than he intended. He described the cupboard owner asking when the boat would be ready and his answer being too optimistic. Claire wanted to make the evening soft enough that he would not regret coming. She put music on, then turned it down because he seemed not to be listening.
At the table he looked toward the hall.
“You can call her,” he said.
“Beth?”
“Vivian.”
“Not if she won't speak.”
“She'll speak to Beth.”
“I know.”
He tore a piece of bread and didn't eat it. Claire watched the crumbs on his plate.
“I don't want to go on asking through people,” he said.
“Then don't ask through me.”
He looked up. She had spoken more sharply than she meant, but not more sharply than she felt.
“I'm sorry,” he said.
“You can be here without it being about her.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He gave a small, humorless smile at the returned question. “Not very well tonight.”
She reached for his hand. He took it, then lowered his eyes.
“I keep thinking of him saying her name,” he said. “On the road.”
Claire left the music low. They sat with their hands together and the food half-eaten.
After a while they finished eating. He stayed long enough to help wash the bowls, but didn't stay the night. At the door he kissed her gently and said he'd call tomorrow.
She let him leave.
Later Beth sent another message about the fabric. Vivian had changed her mind about the cheaper blue, though not willingly. Could Claire leave enough of it on the cutting table to check against the sample in the morning?
Claire wrote Yes. She didn't ask whose morning, or where they would be when it came.