Iris lived above a bakery that had stopped baking by the time Mara arrived. The door downstairs was propped open with a sack of flour. A young man in an apron held it wider for her, then offered to carry the bag she was holding.
“It's only food,” she said.
“It's usually heavier than that.”
She handed it over. He took the stairs two at a time while she followed, trying not to sound as if she had been left behind. At the top he called through Iris's door without knocking.
“Your mother's brought provisions.”
“She's seen the photographs,” Iris called back. “She knows the city's still standing.”
He grinned and gave Mara the bag. The door opened on Iris in jeans with a toothbrush in her mouth. She took the bag with one hand and gestured them both in with the other.
The young man shook his head. “Oven. See you later.”
“Thank you, Owen,” Mara said, reading the name off the apron.
“He's Ben,” Iris said around the toothbrush when he had gone. “That's the bakery.”
Iris went to spit into the bathroom sink.
Mara put the food on the kitchen counter. There was a dirty frying pan in the sink, a bowl of apples on the table and a pair of boots upside down by the radiator. One chair was occupied by a helmet. Not Iris's; too large, with a blue stripe across the front. Mara moved it to the windowsill and sat.
“Whose is that?”
“Nell's.” Iris came back drying her mouth. “She left it here.”
Mara unpacked the chicken she had brought, two pieces in a container, and the rice she had cooked to go with it. Iris found plates in the cupboard. She was barefoot, the nail on one big toe painted a dark red the others had lost.
“I told you I'd eaten,” she said.
“You can have it tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow's good.”
She put one plate back but kept the other. Mara smiled and opened the container.
Through the open kitchen window someone was singing the same three words to a song and failing to reach the fourth. The bakery fan began humming downstairs. Iris shut the window partway, leaving enough room for the cord of a little light she had put around the frame.
“I've got about forty minutes,” she said. “Nell's coming.”
“I didn't know you were going out.”
“I told you. On the phone.”
“You said after work.”
“It is after work.”
Mara pulled out the chair opposite her. The table was too small to put a proper dish in the middle without moving the bowl of apples. She moved it, clearing a circle with her forearm. Iris caught an apple that rolled toward the edge and put it back.
“Have you told everyone?” Mara asked.
“About the money?”
“What else would I mean?”
“I've told Nell. And Ben. He said congratulations and did I want half a loaf of the good bread because they couldn't sell it tomorrow.”
“That's nice.”
“It was.”
“He could've given you a whole one.”
Iris laughed with her mouth full and held a hand over it. Mara felt the pleased little lift she always felt when her daughter laughed at something she hadn't planned to be funny. It was easier to begin with that between them.
“I want you to think about what you'd actually like,” she said.
“Bread.”
“I'm serious.”
Iris put down her fork. “I'd like not to worry about rent. I have thought about it.”
Mara reached across to straighten the edge of the chicken container. There was a little crack in the lid. She had meant to throw that one away.
“Somewhere of your own, to start,” she said. “With a good kitchen.”
Iris looked around the room. “I like this kitchen.”
Mara had brought a folded piece of paper in the side pocket of her bag. It wasn't a property listing. She had not gone that far. It was a page torn from the notebook she used for things the hotel needed, with a rough shape on it and two streets she thought might be worth looking at. There were houses out there with space beside them, enough to build something small, or buy two adjoining places if two came up.
She put it on the table. Iris looked at it, then at her.
“What's that?”
“Just thinking.”
“Is that your house?”
“It doesn't have to be a house. Could be somewhere we each had our own door.”
“Who's we?”
“Me. You. Your uncle and Elena, if things—”
She stopped. Iris was no longer looking at the paper.
“She said Thursday.”
“I know what she said.”
“Okay.”
“I meant if they wanted somewhere. Not because they had to. There's room.”
Iris turned the paper around. Mara had drawn the little extra building behind the main rectangle, where there would be a garden between them. A path, a table, enough distance to shut a door without having to get in a car. She hadn't drawn the table but she could see it now, and the room behind the square she had marked as hers.
“That would be you,” she said, touching the smaller shape.
“Why am I at the back?”
“It was only—”
Iris was smiling, but not enough to make the question disappear. Mara took her hand away.
“There isn't a back yet. It's a piece of paper.”
“I like living above the bakery. I like Nell being four streets away. I can walk to the depot if the buses are stupid. I know which woman downstairs takes everyone's packages.”
“You could still see them.”
“They'd have to come around the big house to get to the little one.”
Mara folded the paper once. It was a rough drawing. She had known it was a rough drawing before she came.
“You don't have to work anymore either,” she said.
Iris looked at her so steadily that Mara wished she had put that first, when the bread had made them laugh.
“I want to.”
“You could do something else.”
“I like driving.”
“People spit on those buses.”
“People do all sorts of things in hotel rooms. You still go into them.”
“Not when I don't have to.”
“That's good. I'm glad you won't have to.” Iris pushed her plate away. There was a small piece of chicken left. “I spent eight months trying to get this job. Do you remember how excited I was?”
Mara remembered. The phone call, the forms spread over this table, Iris calling her again after the training day because she had got something wrong and couldn't stand waiting until morning to find out if it mattered. Mara had listened for forty minutes while standing in the grocery store with a package of frozen peas against her arm.
“Of course I remember.”
“I haven't stopped being excited because you bought the right ticket.”
Mara looked away toward the window. The man downstairs had reached the fourth word at last. It was not the one she had thought he was trying for.
“I'm not saying you should stop doing everything,” she said.
Iris rubbed her palms together, getting rice off them, then got up to run them under the tap. Mara could see the back of her neck, the same fine hair that had never stayed in its ponytail. She waited for Iris to turn around.
Mara opened the container and put the remaining chicken away. Iris dried her hands and took it from her.
“Thank you for bringing this.”
“You don't have to thank me for chicken.”
“I want to thank you for chicken.”
She put it in the refrigerator. There was a loaf in there wrapped in a striped cloth. Mara could see one cut end, the bread filled with seeds. Half a loaf, very good, given before there was any reason to think Iris needed feeding.
Someone knocked twice on the open door. A woman with short hair and a red mark on her forehead leaned in. She held a bicycle wheel in one hand, its quick-release skewer sticking out at an angle.
“Sorry. Is my helmet— Oh, hello.”
Iris picked up the helmet from the sill. “Mara, Nell. Nell, my mother.”
“Congratulations,” Nell said. “I'm not going to ask you to fund the bicycle. It's always been like this.”
Mara smiled. Nell's sweater had a hole at the elbow, neatly sewn around rather than closed. She rested the wheel against the doorframe and held out a hand.
“Nice to meet you.”
“You too.”
“We're only going to Luis's. You can come if you want.”
Iris looked at her. There was no warning in it, no request that she say no. For a moment Mara could picture herself staying, wearing the wrong shoes, listening while the two women talked about people she didn't know.
“I've got things to do,” she said.
“Okay.” Nell took the helmet. “Next time.”
Mara put the folded drawing in her bag. Iris came to the door with her, leaving Nell to put the wheel back on her bicycle in the hall.
“You know I want you to have things,” Mara said quietly.
“I know.”
“Good things.”
Iris came closer and kissed her cheek. Then she put both arms around her for long enough that Mara had to take a hand off her bag and hold her back.
“I'll think about the rent,” she said into Mara's shoulder. “Properly. When you know what you've got.”
Mara nodded. Iris let her go.
Downstairs, Ben was wiping flour off a counter. He pointed at a paper bag near the door.
“She left that for you,” he said.
Mara looked inside. Two rolls, still warm at the middle. She could not remember Iris going downstairs. Perhaps she had asked before Mara arrived.
She carried them to the car on top of the empty rice container, holding the bag open so they wouldn't go soft.