Nate sent a message on Friday morning asking whether he could speak to me.
I read it while Ruth was trying to get a piece of toast out of the toaster without touching anything hot.
“It's him,” I said.
She glanced at my phone. “Do you want to?”
I thought about it, then replied that I could meet him outside when he arrived.
“I'll be in here,” Ruth said.
“I know.”
She got the toast free and cut off the burned corner.
Twenty minutes later, Nate parked across the road. I went out and closed the front door behind me.
He stayed on the pavement. There was a little hollow under his eyes. He looked as if he'd slept about as well as I had.
“Thank you,” he said.
“What did you want to tell me?”
He put his hands in his jacket pockets.
“I've told Bea I can't marry her tomorrow.”
I looked at him.
“You've told her?”
“Last night. At her flat.”
I pictured the room where we'd eaten takeaway, the table with the folded cardboard under it. I didn't want to picture Bea hearing him say that there.
“What did she say?”
“She cried. We both did. We talked for a long time.”
“Are you saying this because I left?”
“At her flat, I started saying we could give you Friday to calm down. Maybe you'd be all right for Saturday.” He looked down. “I heard myself counting how long you had to stop being hurt so our wedding could happen. I'd lied to you at the table. Then I'd carried your box to the gate because you couldn't stay. I was still trying to fit you around it.”
I gripped the edge of my sleeve.
“I stopped,” he said. “I told her I couldn't do it. Not the wedding. Not another day of managing what you'd feel about us.”
He took his hands out of his pockets, then put them back. There was nowhere useful to keep them.
“I love her,” he said. “That hasn't gone away. But I can't stand in the garden tomorrow and make promises as if this week hasn't happened.”
I kept my eyes on his face.
“Does not marrying her depend on what I say to you?”
“No.”
“Because I'm not offering you our summer back.”
He nodded. “I know.”
“I need to hear that those aren't connected.”
“They aren't. Whatever happens between you and me, I can't marry Bea tomorrow. I told her that.”
I breathed out slowly.
For one horrible moment after his first sentence, I'd thought I was being handed the wedding to decide. Say I wanted him, and it stopped. Say I didn't, and he went back to her. I hadn't known how tired I was until he put that fear down.
“Who's telling people?” I asked.
“Bea wants to decide how she tells the family. I'll contact people I invited. And I'll help with the hired things.”
“Does Mum know?”
“Bea was going to tell her this morning.”
He looked toward Ruth's house. Ruth opened the front-room window and went back to the kitchen.
“I didn't come to ask you to help us sort it out,” he said.
“Good.”
“I wanted you to know before somebody told you I was doing it for you.”
I nodded.
He looked down at the pavement. There was a small crack between us with a weed growing through it.
“I thought saying I loved her made the rest manageable,” he said. “It didn't.”
I didn't answer. He didn't ask me to.
“You lied to me,” I said finally.
“Yes.”
“That part doesn't change because you aren't getting married.”
“I know.”
His voice stayed quiet. He wasn't trying to persuade me to look at him differently. For the first time all week, he had brought me news that didn't require me to do anything for him.
“Thank you for telling me,” I said.
He nodded once. “I should go.”
“Okay.”
He crossed the road. I watched him get into his car, then went inside before he drove away.
Ruth was washing the breakfast plates. She looked up, but didn't ask a question until I spoke.
“He's told Bea he won't marry tomorrow.”
She turned the tap off.
“How are you?”
“I don't know yet.”
She handed me a clean tea towel. I dried a plate while she washed the next one.
“There's no rush,” she said.
I put the plate away where it belonged. Then I took another.
Tomorrow there wouldn't be a groom waiting in Mother's garden. I had thought that knowledge would feel like a victory.
Mostly, I kept picturing Bea on that floor, in the place where we'd laughed over dumplings.