Mara took the first bag as far as the car. It was heavier than it looked, the books shifting toward the handle until she had to change hands. She opened the trunk, moved the grocery bags to one side and set it down.
Elena was in the hall behind her, looking for the key she had put away. The second bag stood at her feet. Mara could hear the small sounds of the search: zipper, coins, the catch of a purse. She went back to get the bag.
“I've got it,” Elena said.
“I can take it.”
“Then take it.”
Mara bent and lifted. As she straightened, Daniel's van pulled in behind her car. Not close enough to block it; he left room because he knew how she liked to turn. He got out with a tool in his hand and a paper bag under his arm.
“Thought you'd be off,” he said.
“We are.”
“You wanted me to—” He looked at the bag she was carrying. “I'll do it while you get these in.”
Elena had found her key. She held it for a moment, then put it back in the little pocket inside her purse.
“Leave it, Dan.”
“It's only the lamp.”
“Mara can take it as it is.”
He looked at Mara. She stood with the handles cutting into her palm, wanting him not to ask the question he was going to ask.
“Where is it?”
“Sitting room.”
He went past them. Elena closed her eyes once, then picked up her coat from the rail. It was the thinner one, the one Daniel had told Mara not to let her take.
Mara carried the second bag to the trunk and laid it beside the first. When she came back Daniel had the lamp on his knees. He had put the paper bag on the table. Two boxes of sandwiches showed through its open top.
“Have you eaten?” he asked.
“Yes,” Elena said.
“I've got enough.”
“We've eaten.”
He worked the screw loose. The arm folded down, making the lamp suddenly smaller. It had taken him no longer than a minute. Mara got the box from upstairs and put it beside him.
“Thank you,” she said.
Daniel placed the base inside, wound the cord around it and set the shade on top. He looked at it, took the shade out again and turned it over so it would sit without pressing against the arm.
“There. Nothing to it.”
Elena stood by the door with her coat over her arm. Mara picked up the box.
“Right,” she said.
Daniel put the tool in his pocket. “I fitted the shower.”
“I've seen it,” Elena said.
“It's better. You can move it with one hand now.”
“Thank you.”
“Might get a different head. That one's all right, but the man in the shop said—”
He stopped. Elena had put her coat on. One sleeve had turned inside out, catching her hand. Mara stepped toward her, setting down the box to free it, but Elena had already shaken the lining loose.
Daniel looked between them.
“Can we have five minutes?” he asked.
Nobody answered immediately. He rubbed his palm over his chin.
“I'm not trying to be difficult.”
“I know,” Mara said.
Elena looked at her. Mara picked up the box again.
“I'll put this in the car.”
“Stay,” Elena said.
Mara stopped.
“I'd like you to stay.”
Daniel pulled the chair back from the table. “Of course she can stay. Nobody said she had to go.”
He sat. Elena remained standing. Mara put the box on the table, not taking either of the other chairs. She could see the print on the sandwich box. Chicken, bacon, lettuce. The place he always went when a job ran late and he didn't want to come home hungry and make it somebody else's problem.
“I don't know what I've done,” he said.
“We've talked about this.”
“We've talked about you being unhappy. I've listened to that. I'm trying.”
“I know you're trying.”
“Then why are we doing it like this?”
Elena put her purse on the chair nearest the door. She didn't take her coat off.
“I'm going to the room I told you about.”
“For how long?”
“I don't know.”
“You see how that sounds.”
“Yes.”
He looked at Mara. “You must have an opinion.”
She had several. They crowded together so quickly that she couldn't choose one without making the others seem cruel. The shower was fixed, there were sandwiches, her brother had a black line along his wrist and he was asking for five minutes in a house he had kept warm for nearly thirty years.
“Maybe you could look at it as some time,” she said.
Elena's face changed very little. It was the little change Mara had begun to recognize: the mouth no longer trying to help her find the right words.
“It is time,” Elena said. “I don't know how much. But I'm not going away so he'll understand I could go away. I'm going.”
Daniel pulled one of the sandwich boxes toward him and pushed it back.
“I'm right here.”
“I know.”
“You can say it to me.”
Elena turned toward him. “I want to live somewhere else. I wanted it before Sunday. I haven't changed my mind.”
The sentence had nowhere useful to go in the kitchen. Daniel looked toward the back door, then down at his hands. Mara heard the refrigerator switch off. She could remember being on the other side of a table like this, her own husband asking what time she would be home as though there were no answers larger than a time.
She took a breath.
“She has got it arranged,” she said.
Daniel looked up. “I know she has. You keep telling me.”
“It's not something she's doing this afternoon because—”
“Because we won?” Elena asked.
“No.”
“Then say what it is.”
Mara looked at the box. The shade stuck up above the rim. She ought to have put another towel around it; there were turns on the way out of the neighborhood where things slid across the seat.
Daniel stood. “Let's go and see the place, then.”
Elena shook her head.
“If it's all right, it's all right. I'm not saying she can't go. I want to know where she'll be.”
“I told you the street.”
“I mean inside. If there's anything needs doing.”
“Not today.”
He put his hands in his pockets. Mara could see the outline of the tool in one of them.
“I wasn't going to move in.”
“I didn't say you were.”
The room went quiet again. In the hall, Elena's phone rang from her purse. She answered it without leaving the doorway. Mara heard her say yes, then thank you, then that she would be out in a minute.
“Jo's here,” she said when she hung up.
Daniel looked at Mara. “You've got everybody coming?”
“I asked if she could help.”
“With two bags?”
Mara felt herself redden. She had arranged help because she didn't trust herself to be enough of it. Now that Jo was outside, waiting as simply as Mara had meant to wait, it looked like a plan everybody had made around her brother.
“I didn't know if there'd be more,” she said.
Elena picked up her purse. “I'm going with her.”
Mara stared. “Your bags are in mine.”
“We'll move them.”
“I can take you.”
“You can bring the lamp out.”
She waited until Mara lifted it, then opened the door. Daniel remained beside the table. His face was the one he'd had as a boy when their mother told him he should have thought of that before, long after the moment when thinking could have helped.
“Dan,” Mara said.
“Go on. She's waiting.”
She followed Elena out. Jo had parked across the street because Daniel's van was behind Mara's car. She was wearing the green earrings and an old coat with a button missing. She came toward them, waving to Daniel when she saw him in the doorway.
“Hello.”
He lifted a hand.
Jo opened her trunk. “Which bag first?”
Elena took one. Mara took the other. They carried them across the street, looking both ways because the curve made it difficult to see what was coming. Jo moved a child's scooter to get the bags flat. It scraped against the spare-tire cover, a loud ordinary sound.
Mara held the lamp box out. Elena lifted the folded lamp and shade from it, spread her coat across her knees and settled them in her lap. Mara put the empty box down beside the car while she helped her close the door.
“I'll call you,” Mara said.
Elena nodded. Jo checked her watch, apologized for getting there a few minutes late and closed the trunk. She had to be back by five; that was still enough time. Elena gave her the address in a voice Mara could hear clearly but couldn't bring herself to attend to.
The car pulled away. At the corner Jo slowed for a bicycle, then turned. Mara stood beside her own open trunk until there was no other car to mistake for theirs.
Behind her Daniel shut the front door. She turned, expecting him to have gone inside. He was on the step with the sandwiches in their paper bag.
“Might as well eat,” he said.
Mara closed the trunk and followed him back into the house.