At Tess's door, Cal reached into his pocket for the car keys.
She had already put her own key in the lock. The bag slipped from her shoulder and hit her thigh.
“Can you wait a minute?” she asked.
He looked at her.
“I want to check it once more.”
“Tess.”
“With someone else looking. Then I can stop.”
He glanced at the bag. “You've checked it.”
“The lining. There's a loose bit. Things get caught.”
He let his hand fall away from his pocket. “All right.”
Her flat was quiet. She turned on the kitchen light and put the tote on the table. Cal took off his jacket, but kept his shoes on.
She emptied everything. Keys, scissors, receipts, her purse, a small bottle of water, the ribbon packet she had forgotten to leave with Mara. She put the items in a line so there couldn't be something underneath something else.
Then she opened the bag all the way.
Cal leaned over it. “Where's the loose bit?”
She showed him. The pale cotton sagged from the inside edge and had torn near one handle. She could push her fingers between it and the canvas, but the fabric folded around them.
He turned the bag inside out as far as it would go and shook it. Tess watched the table. A few grains of sand dropped out, or crumbs. No ring.
He pressed his palm across the bottom, then the sides.
“Nothing hard.”
“I know.”
“Then there's nothing in it.”
She took the bag back. Her hand went into the gap again. She could feel nothing but fabric, just as she had on Friday, but she could also feel how easily the lining moved and caught on itself.
“Hold this,” she said.
She gave him the edge and picked up the scissors.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting it out.”
“You don't need to cut it.”
“I need to know.”
She made the first cut before he could say anything else. The cotton parted with a soft tearing sound. She had expected the cut to be straight, but it went crooked, almost to the canvas.
Cal caught her wrist.
“Slow down.”
She pulled away, not hard. “Let me.”
He released her. She cut around the inner edge, stopping whenever the fabric bunched. The scissors weren't very sharp. She had used them for ribbon and tape, and now they chewed the cotton instead of slicing it.
“Turn it,” Cal said.
“I am.”
“The other way.”
“You can go if you're fed up.”
He looked at her. “I didn't say that.”
“You keep sighing.”
He pressed his lips together. Tess tried to cut another inch and nearly caught her finger.
Cal took the far edge of the lining and held it taut.
“There,” he said. “Try now.”
She did. This time the scissors moved easily.
They worked around the top of the bag. No one spoke for a while. Tess could hear the scrape of the blades and Cal shifting his weight. The loose lining fell onto the table in a pale heap, still attached by a few stitches near the handle.
She cut those too.
The bag was bare canvas inside: bottom, sides, the ordinary stitched seams. She turned it out completely and flattened it on the table.
There was nothing hidden in it.
Cal picked up the detached cotton and shook it open. He ran his fingers over the folds, then held it toward the light.
“Nothing,” he said.
Tess put the scissors down. Her hands were shaking now, after the work was over.
“Okay.”
She tried to sound finished. She wasn't finished. She couldn't stop looking at the heap of lining, at the ugly cut edge inside her bag.
Cal put the cotton down gently.
“It's still a bag.”
“I know.”
“You can use it.”
“I know that.”
He was trying. She could hear it. She sat down before she said something cruel.
The faded orange handles lay across the table. At the beach he had held them over his head and waved the bag like a flag. She had been sitting on a towel, her trousers rolled to the knee, laughing and calling that he should have brought the sandwiches too. For years afterward the bag had kept a little sand in its corners, however often she emptied it.
She picked up one handle.
“I liked that day,” she said.
Cal pulled out the other chair.
“So did I.”
“I wanted more like it.”
He sat down.
Tess rubbed the canvas between her fingers. She had wanted to get the ring out. Now it seemed as if she'd cut up something that had been good before she'd borrowed anything.
“I feel awful,” she said.
He didn't answer at once.
Then he reached across the table and took the scissors away from the edge. He folded the lining so the ragged part was inside, stood up and put it in the kitchen bin.
When he came back, Tess was crying. Quietly, with her hand pressed hard against her mouth, embarrassed by it.
Cal crouched beside her chair.
“Hey.”
She shook her head.
He put a hand on her knee. She held it there with both of hers.
Neither of them said anything about the wedding. He stayed until she could let go. Then he helped put her things back into the usable, unlined bag, one at a time.
Before he left, Tess picked up the ribbon packet.
“I should take this to Mara.”
“Tomorrow,” he said.
She nodded and set it down. He touched her cheek at the door, but didn't try to turn that into a kiss.
After he had gone, Tess put the bag on the chair by her coat. Without the lining, it felt lighter than it should have.