On Thursday Inez came down with her bag packed.
Mara had a table near the window. She had put her notebook beside the coffee, closed, because she didn't want Inez to think she had been waiting all night to open it. The hotel had brought out fresh fruit. Mara had taken an extra bowl and put some in for Inez before remembering that she preferred to choose it herself.
“Morning,” Inez said.
She set the bag beside her chair and went to get coffee. Mara moved the spare bowl farther into the middle of the table. When Inez returned she had a banana, a plate of eggs and a piece of toast balanced on the edge. She sat, took a drink and looked toward the window.
“I'm going back to Chicago,” she said.
“Today?”
“This afternoon. There's a flight at two.”
Mara had expected them to leave. She had looked at the remaining court bookings, wondered whether it was worth one more day here before taking the work somewhere else. Chicago had been the obvious place. Rae was there, the indoor court was good, Inez liked sleeping at home. Mara could stay at the same hotel as before, a few blocks from the apartment. She had the booking page in her phone.
“I'll look at that,” she said.
Inez put down her cup. “I thought you'd go home. I'll meet you in Richmond Monday.”
Mara's hand stopped on the zip of her bag.
“Rae can hit Friday,” Inez said. “I asked her. I want to do that one myself.”
“All right.”
“And Celia's off Saturday. Just the one day. I want to be there.”
Mara nodded. Inez began eating. The eggs were too hot; she spread them across the plate to cool. She looked as tired as yesterday, but less shut in. There was somewhere she wanted to go.
“We could still do the morning,” Mara said. “I wouldn't need the rest of the day.”
Inez swallowed. “I want to play without talking about it after every point. A couple of days. Then come back.”
“We don't have to stop after every point.”
“I know. I just want to do it.”
Mara looked at the bowl of fruit. It was a reasonable thing to want. She could remember wanting the court to herself in college, hitting serves until the light went, not because her coach was bad but because for once she could decide when enough was enough. She had been good at being alone then. Or she remembered it that way.
“I could stay and watch,” she said, and heard herself.
Inez took a piece of toast. She didn't answer immediately. Mara waited for her to find a way to make the offer useful.
“No,” Inez said at last. “Not this one.”
Across the room a waiter lifted a tray off the hotplate. The lid struck another lid. Mara moved her coffee away from the notebook.
“Tuesday, then,” she said.
“Tuesday morning. Give me Monday to get there.”
“Of course.”
“I want you to look at what happens after that early return. Not now. When we're back.”
Mara nodded. There it was, work she could do. Inez still wanted it. She wanted the next ball, help that came from watching properly, someone to see the moment she didn't quite see herself. Mara could feel the answer beginning, the position of the racket, the room behind the service line. She kept it for Tuesday.
Inez finished the eggs. When she went for another piece of toast, Mara opened the travel page and looked for Richmond. It was more expensive with so little notice. Not impossibly expensive. She could get there by evening with a connection.
They canceled the extra nights and arranged the car return. Inez asked Mara to send the receipts with the rest of the week's expenses. There was no discussion of changing the trial, its end date or the money. By ten they had a car full of bags and nothing left to collect from the room.
Mara went upstairs once more because she had left a shirt drying in the bathroom. The room looked almost the same with her things gone. She took the shirt, checked the desk, looked beneath the bed. She found one of Inez's practice balls where it had rolled out of the bag and picked it up.
She could take it down. Inez would say thank you and put it back with all the other balls. Instead Mara left it on the desk, beside the television remote. They had plenty.
*
The airport was farther from the hotel than it had seemed on the map. Inez drove while Mara read the signs. At one junction Mara sent her the wrong way, then corrected herself. Inez turned without complaint, both of them too occupied to make anything of it.
They returned the car and waited for the shuttle. A family stood nearby with a sleeping child laid across two suitcases. The parents kept looking at the child's shoes to make sure neither had fallen. Mara recognized the attention, its continuous little checks. She looked at Inez's bags, counted them, then looked away.
On the shuttle they sat apart because two seats together weren't free. Inez held her phone to her ear and spoke quietly. Mara faced the window. There was no reason she should be included. She had made this trip with Inez before; they had spent the wait talking about practice, picked a place to get coffee, laughed at a gate change. Today Mara couldn't find the ordinary first sentence that would make it the same trip.
At the terminal, Inez got out first. She reached back for Mara's smaller bag and waited while Mara pulled the larger one from the rack.
“Thank you,” Mara said.
They went inside. Inez's flight was earlier, from another concourse. Mara had more than three hours before her first plane. She had planned to use the time to look through Voss again. Now she wanted Inez to sit with her for ten minutes, drink something too expensive, complain about the seats. There was no way to ask that would sound like the small thing she wanted it to be.
They stood beyond security with their bags between them.
“You'll send me your Monday arrival?” Mara asked.
“When I book it. Afternoon, probably.”
“We can get the court Tuesday at ten-thirty. Give you a night.”
“Good.”
“I'll make sure there's somebody to hit.”
“Yes. Please.”
Inez moved the racket bag onto her shoulder. Mara thought of the two mornings with Rae, the points that had gone well, the ones she had only just begun to understand. There would be more tomorrow. She would hear about them later, if Inez chose to tell her.
“If you need anything—”
“I'll call.”
Inez put an arm around her. It was an ordinary goodbye, brief and warm, her cheek close enough for Mara to feel the heat from it. Then she stepped back.
“See you Tuesday.”
“Tuesday.”
Mara watched her walk toward the signs for the other concourse. There were people between them almost at once. She could still see the racket bag, then just the top of Inez's head, then neither.
She stayed by the sign until a man with a wheeled suitcase asked whether she was waiting in line. Mara moved aside.
At her gate, a restaurant was serving breakfast and lunch at the same time. Mara sat where she could see the departure board. She ordered coffee and a sandwich she wasn't hungry for, opened the laptop and found the match.
At four-two in the second set, Inez was moving well. Voss served wide; Inez returned deep. The rally developed exactly as Mara remembered, the approach, the lob, the overhead that kept the point alive. Watching from this angle, Mara could see Voss begin moving toward the next ball before Inez struck it.
She stopped the clip and wrote that down. On another point she found something else: Inez recovering toward the center too soon, leaving the space she'd just defended. She made two notes for the reunion and closed the file.
There were ninety minutes left.
Mara ate half the sandwich. At the next table a woman was telling someone about a room in her house that she wanted painted. She described the color at length, rejecting a suggestion Mara couldn't hear. The conversation carried on without needing to arrive at anything. Mara found herself listening until she realized she was doing it and put her headphones on.
No music was playing. She chose something, took the headphones off again when they called her group and went to board.
On the plane she had a window seat. For the first time that season, nobody she knew was sitting ahead of her or across the aisle. She put the notebook in the pocket of the bag instead of beneath the seat, out of easy reach. The plane moved past a line of small hangars, turned and waited.
She could go home and have the evening. She had an entire day before the weekend, and the weekend before Inez returned. It was what people said they wanted when she described the travel: a few days in their own bed, their own coffee, no one else's schedule. She wanted those things too. She could not make wanting them fill all the space they left.
After takeoff she watched the ground become fields, then cloud. She slept for twenty minutes with her head against the window. When she woke, her neck hurt. She checked the time, saw how much of the journey remained and let the phone stay dark in her hand.
*
It was after eight when she reached Richmond. The connection had been late, then early enough for everyone to stand up together in the aisle. Mara took a car home and let the driver talk about the roadwork. She knew the roadwork. It had been there when she left.
Her condo was warm. She opened the windows, turned on the fan and left the bag by the bedroom door. The plant on the kitchen sill had survived the neighbor's watering but grown toward the glass. Mara turned it, then turned it back. She could do that tomorrow when she had decided where it should live.
There was food in the freezer. She took out a container, put it in a bowl of water to thaw and stood at the counter while the fan pushed warm air across her arms. On the shelf above the sink was a mug Tess had bought on a school trip. Mara used it for pens because the handle had cracked. She had forgotten it was there.
She unpacked before eating. Shoes on the mat, clothes in the basket, spare grips in the drawer. The notebook went on the table with the laptop. She opened the calendar and put in Tuesday at ten-thirty, then sent a request for a hitting partner in Richmond.
Her mother had left a message about the weather. Mara called back. They talked for twelve minutes. Her mother asked whether she was tired, and Mara said she was. There was nothing else she wanted to make her mother carry, and for once she asked about the friend who had moved across the road. The woman had a dog that wouldn't go up the steps. Her mother told the story slowly, including where the dog had lived before and what the movers had broken.
Mara listened. She had time to listen. She asked a question about the dog and got the name of the movers instead, then another story she remembered from the last time. She let her tell it.
Afterward she warmed the food and took it to the table. Her phone was beside the plate. She opened the message from Tess with the terrible trophy photograph, touched the picture and enlarged it. Tess's eyes were nearly shut. Mara's own finger filled one corner.
She typed, Back in Richmond.
The message went. She put the phone down and ate. When the screen lit a few minutes later, it was the hitting partner asking what standard she needed for Tuesday. Mara answered, added the time, and finished her dinner before it went cold.