Daniel brought enough sausages for four people and a loaf of bread still warm in its paper bag. He put both on the counter, took the pan from Mara and said she had the wrong heat on.
“I haven't turned it on.”
“Exactly.”
She let him have the stove. He folded his jacket over the chair and washed his hands, turning the tap with the heel of his palm. When he reached for a towel Mara passed him the clean one from the drawer.
“You fed Leo with this?” he asked, holding up the pan.
“That pan fed you.”
“It's lost a lot of itself since.”
The coating had worn away in a circle at the center. He tilted it, found a less damaged place and put the sausages there. Mara cut the bread and put mustard on the table. A car alarm began outside and stopped before either of them had to complain about it.
It was easy to have him here. He knew where the plates were. He knew which chair would catch a person if they leaned too far back. He had replaced a screw in it twice and told Mara the third time would be her funeral, so she had stopped leaning. He was carrying the salt to the table when he noticed the little shelf she had never put up.
“You could've said,” he told her.
“I was busy not putting it up.”
“Where do you want it?”
“Not tonight. Eat.”
He smiled at her and brought the pan over on a folded towel. They sat opposite each other, both reaching for the mustard before either asked. He gave it to her. She used it, then left the knife balanced on the jar so he would have something to object to.
“Someone's going to get that in their lap.”
“Who?”
He took it off and spread mustard on his bread. She laughed. For a few minutes they had only the sausages to discuss, the paper they came in and the butcher who always asked after their mother although she had been dead for nine years. Daniel had stopped correcting him. Mara said she couldn't bear it; Daniel said the man had more customers than living relatives, he wasn't keeping a register.
“She'd have liked him,” he said.
“She liked anybody who gave her bones for stock.”
“There you are.”
Mara ate another piece of bread. She had not had much appetite at lunch. Now, listening to him talk about a freezer door that had warped in a garage, she was hungry in a way that made her feel she had been hungry all day without knowing it.
“There's going to be a meal at the hotel,” she said. “When we're done. A goodbye thing. Simon said bring people. I'd like you to come.”
Daniel looked up. “I know where it is.”
“I'm asking, not giving directions.”
“I know. I'd like to.”
“Good.”
“When?”
“We haven't fixed it yet. Soon.”
He nodded. She could see him planning something: a shirt, perhaps, whether he could park in the staff spaces, whether this would be a proper meal or the kind of gathering where one had to eat afterward. He would bring something. He would ask what and, when she said nothing, choose his own.
He got up to refill his glass. The cupboard door stood open behind him. He put his hand against it to close it and saw the coat.
His hand stopped.
“That's Elena's.”
Mara put down her fork.
“She's got some things here.”
He opened the door a little farther. The book was on the shelf, the nightgown folded beneath it. He touched the coat sleeve, then took his hand away as if he'd only been moving it out of the hinge.
“She leave that yesterday?”
“No. We got it today. She's waiting for some drawers at the room. I'm keeping it till there's space.”
Daniel remained standing. Mara could see his reflection in the dark kitchen window, cut off at the waist by the sill. Behind the reflection the back of the next house was almost entirely unlit.
“You took her back?”
“For clothes.”
“She could've asked me.”
“She asked me.”
He shut the cupboard. It had a loose hinge; the door settled outward again, leaving a dark line down the side. He pressed it with two fingers until the catch held.
“So you've seen where she is.”
Mara nodded.
“What's it like?”
“A room. Clean. There's a bed and a table.”
He pulled his chair out and sat, leaving the glass by the sink. His sausage lay on the plate, its cut end cooling into a pale circle.
“I wasn't asking for the inventory.”
Mara looked at him. “I don't know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to tell me if she's all right.”
“She is.”
“Because she says so?”
“I was there.”
He looked toward the cupboard again. “And you came away with her things.”
“She hasn't got much space.”
“She's got a house.”
The word lay between the plates. Mara thought of Elena opening the bathroom window in the rooming house, then realized that had been Priya's window, not Elena's. All the rooms were beginning to join up in her mind. People were going into them without asking her where they should go.
“She wanted to leave,” she said.
“I know that.”
“Before Sunday.”
“You told me. She told me.”
“She meant it then.”
Daniel put down the piece of bread he was holding.
“I haven't said she didn't mean it. I've said things changed. We were all thinking one way on Saturday. We found out something on Sunday that should've—”
He stopped. Outside, a bus passed at the end of the street, lit windows moving between the buildings.
“She didn't find out she wanted to stay,” Mara said.
He looked at her, then looked away. She had not said it well. It sounded like the sort of sentence somebody clever could practice before arriving at a kitchen where another person still had to eat. She pushed her plate a little farther from her.
“I knew she wanted to go. I told you about Thursday and made it sound like we could get her over it. I shouldn't have done that.”
“I didn't ask you to get her over anything.”
“No.”
“You came to me.”
Mara nodded. It was the nod that hurt, more than anything she had said. He had not called her asking for help. She had heard Elena's wish and carried it to him like a problem they could share.
He rubbed the heel of his hand over one eye.
“I keep thinking she's going to call. Tell me there's something wrong with the room. Or she can't find something.”
“She might call about something.”
“I know. That isn't what I mean.”
Mara stayed quiet. Daniel looked toward the window again. He had repaired the blind there for her, the year Iris left home, after Mara broke the cord pulling it too hard. He had said she couldn't break everything just because she was cross, then come the next morning with a replacement. She had been furious until he made her laugh. She wished she could remember what he'd said.
“Where is she?” he asked.
Mara looked down at the mustard jar.
“Ask her.”
“I'm asking you.”
“I know.”
His chair scraped backward. He got up, took his plate to the sink and stood with his back to her. She heard him put the fork down carefully inside it.
“I'm not going to turn up,” he said.
“Then she can tell you when she's ready.”
“I'm her husband.”
Mara could still see him as he'd looked on Sunday, showing Iris the ticket photograph a second time because it was different when the person was in the room. She stood and carried her own plate over. There was no room beside his at the bottom of the sink, so she laid it on top.
“I won't give you the address,” she said.
He stepped aside, letting her past. Not far enough to feel gracious, not so little that she had to squeeze. She filled the bowl, poured in dish soap and watched the foam gather around the plates.
“Are you going to ask me to fetch her?” she asked.
“You make me sound ridiculous.”
“I don't want to.”
“I wasn't going to ask you.”
She turned off the tap. For a while the only sound was water dripping from the faucet, one drop at a time. Daniel took the towel from the counter and wiped a place that wasn't wet.
“I won't,” Mara said. “That's all.”
He folded the towel, then unfolded it. She thought he would leave. His jacket was still on the chair, the paper bag of bread beside it. Instead he asked whether Leo had called.
“Not today.”
“He's coming Sunday.”
“He said he might.”
“He's coming.”
Mara nodded and pushed the bread bag toward him.
Daniel lifted his jacket. Before putting it on, he said, “This meal. At work.”
“Yes?”
“Is that going to be this?”
“What?”
He looked at the cupboard. “People telling me what she wants. In front of everyone. Leo. Your daughter. People who know me because I've fixed their oven.”
“It's for the staff.”
“You asked me.”
“Because I want you there.”
He held the jacket against his chest for a moment. The collar folded under his hand.
“I don't want to sit there while someone explains my marriage to a roomful of people. If you know it's going to be that, tell me now.”
Mara shook her head. She had wanted her brother beside her for something good, proud of a sister who had finally done something she could not have done without astonishing luck. She had wanted Doreen to see him laugh, Leo to come if he could, Iris not to feel every family meal had become a choice of side. None of that had stopped being something she wanted.
“I'm not planning a speech about you and Elena,” she said.
“Promise me.”
She looked at the two plates in the water, their edges showing through the foam.
“I promise. It's a meal. We can have a meal.”
He nodded once. It wasn't relief exactly, but his shoulders lowered enough for him to put his jacket on. Mara wrapped the remaining sausages in the paper and held them out. He took them, thanked her, then looked as though the thank-you had surprised him.
At the door he turned back.
“She taking her things out for good?”
“She's taking things she wants.”
He waited, but Mara had no other answer. He went down the stairs carrying the sausages and half the bread. She listened until the outside door closed, then returned to the kitchen.
The cupboard had opened again. She set a chair in front of it while she washed the plates. When she was done, she moved the chair back to its place and left the door as it was.