Her phone vibrated in her coat.
“All right?” Adam said.
Somewhere behind her a cart rattled through double doors.
“Where did we meet?”
“What?”
“Where did we meet, Adam?”
He let out a small breath, almost a laugh. “The open house. You were locked out.”
She looked down at the paper.
“We were locked out.”
“Yeah. That's what I mean. What's going on?”
They had told that story at their wedding. She had been early, he had been late, and neither of them had checked the cancellation message. Two idiots on a landing in the rain, unable to get in, too stubborn to go away. They'd gone for coffee. A month later they had rented the apartment upstairs.
“Do you know somebody called Martin Reed?”
On the other end of the call, something scraped. She heard Adam say a word away from the phone. When he spoke to her again, he sounded closer.
“Where are you?”
“Still at the hospital.”
“Stay there. I'm coming.”
“I'm fine.”
“I know. Stay there, please.”
She stood beside a machine selling little packets of cookies. Behind its glass, a spiral had turned halfway and stopped. The packet at the end hung by one corner.
“How do you know him?” she asked.
“I'll tell you when I get there.”
Nina put the phone away. A man approached the vending machine, glanced at her and waited.
“Sorry.” She stepped aside.
He put money in, pressed a button, watched nothing happen. He pressed it again. Nina nearly told him about the packet caught on the spiral, then saw that he was looking at a different row. She went outside.
There was a concrete bench near the entrance. She sat at one end and watched cars slow beneath the canopy. For a while she read work messages without answering them. A request for tomorrow's meeting. A question someone else had already answered. Words she understood, arranged into problems she was usually pleased to solve.
She couldn't remember whether Adam had said he knew Martin. He hadn't said no.
When he came through the entrance, he was carrying her scarf. She hadn't realized she'd left without it. He saw her and stopped searching the faces around him.
“Hey.”
She stood. He put the scarf around her neck, and she caught his wrist before he could smooth it into place.
“How do you know him?”
His hand went still against the wool.
“Through work. He's been around some of the places.”
“What places?”
“The houses. Why? What did he say?”
She let go of him. “He told me to ask you where we met.”
Adam looked toward the hospital doors.
“That's all?”
“No. He gave me this.”
She took the folded paper out. Adam didn't reach for it. He read the address while she held it between them.
“Why would he give me our old address?” she asked.
“I don't know.”
“Why would he know it?”
Adam rubbed his forehead. “People know that place. It's still being rented. I've done work there.”
“Recently?”
“Not for a while.”
The door behind him opened. Warm air washed over Nina's legs. A woman came out pushing an empty wheelchair, turned around beneath the canopy and went back inside. Adam watched her pass.
“Is he still in there?” he asked.
“They sent me out.”
“What happened to him?”
“They didn't tell me.”
“Okay.”
“Why are you saying okay?”
He looked at her. “I don't know what else to say.”
She wanted him to tell her Martin had made a mistake. She wanted him to laugh, without being cruel, at the notion that a man lying in a hospital bed could know anything worth saying about the two of them. Instead he stood with his hands empty at his sides.
“He had a reference from my work. An old complaint. Eighteen months, maybe.”
“Then somebody gave him your name.”
“He had your name too.”
Adam took a breath. “Nina, I don't know why he called you. I've met him. I don't like him. I don't know what he's trying to do.”
“You looked scared.”
“On the phone?”
“You sounded scared.”
He shifted closer. “You were at a hospital telling me a man I know was talking about our marriage. Yes, it scared me.”
She looked up at the lit windows. Some had their blinds down. One was dark except for a square of television light.
“We were both locked out,” she said.
“I know.”
“You said I was.”
He glanced at the paper again. “You were there first. You showed me the message. That's all I meant.”
She could see him as he'd been that morning, six years ago, appearing at the foot of the steps with his jacket over his head. His wet hair. The way he'd smiled when she told him they'd come for nothing. He had said it was a nice enough place to stand.
Now he was smiling faintly, as if he had reached the same part of the memory.
She folded the paper. “I need to get my car.”
“Leave it. I'll bring you back tomorrow.”
“I want my car.”
He nodded. “I'll walk you up.”
“You don't have to.”
“I know.”
She let him come. At the elevator he waited for her to press the button. She was aware of the ridiculous smallness of it, a grown man declining to choose which floor his wife wanted. She showed him the photograph on her phone. Level three, a blue pillar. He didn't make the joke her father would have made.
They reached the car. Adam looked through the window at the bag on the passenger seat.
“Can you drive?”
“Yes.”
“I'm asking, not saying you can't.”
She put the paper in her bag. “I know.”
They stood there, both of them needing the other to do something ordinary. Finally Nina leaned forward and rested her forehead against his chest. His arms came around her at once. His shirt was cool from outside. Beneath it she could feel the steady movement of his breathing, the body she'd known in darkness and illness and half-awake annoyance, taking up its familiar amount of space.
“I hate hospitals,” she said.
“I know.”
For once it was exactly what she wanted him to say.
He got home first. By the time Nina came through the door, the porch light was steady and the table had been wiped down. Her dinner plate was in the dishwasher. His was still in the sink, soaking.
She hung up her coat. Adam was waiting in the kitchen with the kettle on.
“Tea?”
“Not the sleepy stuff.”
“I wasn't going to.”
She sat at the newly shortened table. Without the leaf, she was closer to the window than she expected. He brought two mugs, then stood looking at the chairs as though there were some right choice he might fail to make.
“Sit down,” she said.
He took the chair beside her.
For a while they drank without talking. Nina's phone lay on the table between them. She expected it to ring, though nobody had promised to call. She didn't know whether she was waiting for news of Martin or a message from someone who could tell her what he'd meant.
Adam asked whether she'd eaten anything at the hospital. When she shook her head, he got up and put bread in the toaster.
“I had dinner.”
“You had spinach.”
She was hungry. She didn't want to be. It seemed humiliating that being frightened could leave room for wanting toast.
He set the plate between them. She took a piece. He had buttered it to the corners.
“Will you tell me if you find out what he wants?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Don't decide I don't need to know.”
“I won't.”
She finished the toast. Adam took her empty mug, but she caught it by the handle before he could lift it. There was still a little warmth in the bottom. He let her keep it.
Upstairs, she brushed her teeth while he got ready for bed. When she came in, she lay down with a careful inch of sheet between them. He turned off the light.
She counted the quiet sounds: a car passing, water in the pipes, Adam turning onto his side. After a while she moved toward him. He didn't say anything. His hand settled at her waist.
In the morning he made eggs while she found something to wear. The blouse she'd wanted was still wet in the washing machine. She put it on a hanger over the shower rail and chose a sweater instead.
On the dresser lay the folded address note. She couldn't remember taking it out of her bag. She slipped it into the pocket of the sweater.
Adam had set her place facing away from the window because the sun came straight through it at this hour. She sat and ate half an egg before she could begin.
“I'm going to look at that complaint.”
He kept his eyes on the stove. “Today?”
“It's where I'm going anyway.”
“I meant, will they let you?”
“I signed it. I can ask.”
He turned down the heat. “What will you tell them?”
“What happened.”
“About me?”
Nina set her fork down.
Adam looked at her. “I'm just asking.”
“I don't know what there is to tell about you.”
He looked away first. “Right.”
She finished her coffee. Usually they left each other with the day already negotiated: who would be late, what to thaw, whether the parcel by the door needed to go somewhere. Now she couldn't think of a single ordinary thing to ask.
At the door he touched the pocket of her bag.
“Keys?”
She held them up.
He nodded. She kissed his cheek because she didn't know whether not doing it would be a decision she meant to make. Then she went to work with the address in her pocket and the taste of coffee still in her mouth.