They returned on Tuesday with the same bags and an extra paper carrier containing biscuits.
Beth put the biscuits on the studio table and stood looking at the room. Claire had set out the blue fabric, the sample card, and the paper beneath it. Beth read the label, then looked up.
“Was it in danger of becoming something else?”
“I wanted you to find it.”
“I have.”
She smiled, not quite enough to make the two days disappear. Vivian came behind her, carrying a folded coat. She looked thinner in the ordinary sense that a person looked thinner when she stopped holding her shoulders up for a room.
“You came back,” Claire said.
“I live here,” Beth replied.
“I meant—”
“I know.”
Vivian set the coat on a chair. She looked at the sample dress, the new mirror, the shelf of fabrics that had not grown or vanished while she was away.
“Can I have a minute?” she asked.
Beth nodded and went toward the side door. Claire followed after a hesitation. The room would be Vivian's for a minute, without any of them watching what she made of it.
Outside, the yard was warm. Someone had shifted the bins, leaving a clean rectangle beneath them. Beth sat on the lowest step of the short stair and pulled her bag into her lap.
“Here,” she said.
She handed Claire the camera body.
Claire took it. The strap was wrapped the way Beth had wrapped it Sunday. It felt familiar and slightly altered by having been in someone else's possession, though nothing about the machine had changed.
“Thank you,” she said, uncertain whether gratitude was the right response to the return of something taken.
Beth looked toward the side door. “I used it.”
Claire held the body more tightly.
“You said you didn't want to.”
“I didn't. Vivian needed a picture for someone she might work with. We were trying not to spend the whole time sitting in a borrowed room.”
“Yesterday?”
Beth nodded. “I took ordinary ones. Her by the window. One laughing because she hated the first five.”
“And?”
Beth took out her laptop. She had brought it to do invoices, she said, and transferred the photographs last night before putting it away. Before midnight, after supper. The extra image had appeared with the others.
She turned the screen toward Claire.
Vivian stood alone in the studio. The sample dress was in the background, the new narrow mirror beside it. Her left hand was raised near her chest, her right hand holding the wedding ring as it came away from her finger. Her head was bent. She was wearing the clothes she had worn back today.
Tomorrow had become today again.
Claire looked toward the closed side door. Vivian was inside, alone. Neither woman could see what she was doing.
“You showed her?” Claire asked.
“Yes.”
“Is that why—”
“Ask her.”
Claire looked back at the picture. There was no visible threat in it, no blood, no man behind the bride. A woman removing a ring in a room where she could work. She had not known how much she had begun to expect damage from the extra files until one showed something else.
“It works for you,” she said.
“Apparently.” Beth shut the laptop, put it away and stood.
“What did you want me to do while you were there?” Claire asked.
Beth looked at her, surprised.
“Help with the samples. You did.”
“I mean besides that.”
“Nothing.”
Claire nodded, though the answer still cost her. She put the camera into her own bag without looking at its screen.
When they went back inside, Vivian stood near the cutting table. Her left hand was bare. The ring lay on the sample card, a small gold circle beside a square of blue.
Claire didn't look at it too obviously. Vivian noticed anyway.
“I took it off,” she said.
“I can see.”
“I didn't know where to put it.”
Beth opened a drawer and found a little paper box that had once held buttons. She set it near Vivian, not picking up the ring herself. Vivian put it inside and closed the lid.
“Beth showed me the picture,” Claire said.
Vivian looked toward the yard, then back. “She didn't tell me I had to come.”
“I know.”
“I could have stayed there. It was a nice room. Too many cushions, but nice.”
“Why didn't you?”
“Because I'd still have to answer the phone eventually.”
She sat, and Beth pushed a chair closer to the table for her. Claire remained standing until Vivian gestured at the other one.
“I need to tell Evan something,” she said. “You too.”
Claire looked at Beth. Her sister was watching Vivian with a face that held no surprise. Something had been spoken between them away from here.
“I can call him,” she said.
“Ask if he wants to come. Don't tell him he has to.”
“I won't.”
“And I won't be photographed while I tell it.”
Claire glanced at the bag she had placed beneath her chair. “No.”
“I mean any of it. Not to send someone a future, not to show him what I'm going to do.”
Claire met her gaze. “I won't.”
Vivian nodded. Claire waited, but she didn't ask for anything else.
Beth opened the biscuits. They were mostly broken.
“Train,” she said.
Vivian took a piece and laughed, suddenly, at the crumbs in her lap. Claire laughed too. It was a fragile pleasure and did not need to be large to be welcome.
She called Evan from the front doorway. He said he could be there in half an hour.
“She wants to speak?”
“Yes.”
“All right.”
Claire went back inside. Vivian had picked up the cheaper blue and was rubbing it between her finger and thumb. Beth said she still didn't have to like it. Vivian said she hadn't agreed to like everything just because she'd come home.
Claire sat with them and waited.