Beth's phone rang while she was trying to explain. She looked at the screen, answered and turned away from Nina.
“Yes. I'm coming.”
She listened. Her face changed, the flat endurance of the room breaking around something that wasn't quite a smile.
“No, you don't have to eat that. Get something else.”
Nina rose to give her space. At the door Beth covered the mouthpiece with her hand.
“He got food. It's got leaves in it.”
“Herbs?”
“Apparently they're big.”
She turned back to the call. Nina went out onto the walkway smiling despite herself.
Adam was standing by the office with his phone in his hand. He saw her and started toward her, then stopped. She shook her head. Not now. He stayed where he was.
There was a takeout place visible beyond the lot. Nina could smell hot oil every time the wind changed. She hadn't eaten properly since the morning at Iris's, and even that was beginning to seem like something that had happened to a person she used to know.
She went back inside long enough to say she was buying food. Beth was still on the call. She put a finger over the microphone and said she wasn't hungry.
“I'm buying it anyway.”
At the counter Nina stood behind a man ordering enough for a family, changing each item after it had been entered. She had an unreasonable desire to tell him he was allowed only one decision. Instead she read the short menu and waited. When her turn came, she ordered rice and chicken in two paper bowls and an extra fork because she could already picture herself dropping one.
Outside Adam had gone. He'd sent a message saying he was arranging ordinary transport to get the records and would call before returning. Nina read it twice, looking for an arrangement made on her behalf. There wasn't one. She put the phone away.
In the room Beth had moved their things off the table. She took the bag from Nina, opened both bowls and divided the chicken unevenly, giving Nina the larger pieces.
Nina pushed one back into Beth's bowl.
“Don't fuss.” Beth moved it back.
She left it there.
For the first few mouthfuls they didn't speak. The food was hotter than either expected. Beth ate with the bowl on her knee, shifting to keep the sauce off the bedspread.
“There's a table,” Nina said.
“I can see it.”
“Sorry.”
Beth looked at her, then at the bowl, and laughed once. “You must be exhausting at home.”
“Apparently I haven't known what's happening at home.”
The laugh disappeared. Nina wished she'd let it stay a joke.
She ate another mouthful. Outside, a car door shut. They both looked toward the curtain. When no one came to their door, Beth put the bowl on the bed beside her and took a drink of water.
“Were you happy?” she asked.
Nina stared at her.
“Before.”
She thought of the table leaf against the wall, Adam beneath the runners trying to unstick them. It was less than two days ago. She could still feel the little shock of laughter when he hit his head.
“Yes,” she said. “Some days I was annoyed. Yes.”
Beth nodded. Not consoling her, not telling her that part had to count for something. Accepting the answer as something Nina was allowed to know.
“I wasn't, at the end,” Beth said. “But there were things. You wouldn't keep trying if there'd never been things.”
She picked up the fork again. Nina let her eat without supplying a useful response.
The bag was at a former housemate's place. Beth had sealed it herself: actual identity documents in a plastic folder, spare cash in a smaller envelope, the memory card containing Theo's completed stop-motion films. The room was being cleared that afternoon. There were moving people and boxes, the housemate dividing possessions between a van and a sister's spare room.
“She can keep it,” Nina said. “Take it with her. You can get it later.”
“She said she could put it in the van.”
“Then let her.”
Beth looked at the table between them. “I don't know where the van's going after hers. Some of it's storage. Some belongs to other people.”
“She can label it.”
“She knows that.”
Nina stopped. Beth took another bite, chewed and put down the fork.
“It's my money. Not all my money. What I've kept aside. And the papers I paid to replace because last time I left them.”
“I have cash.”
“I know.”
“I'm not offering it as a loan.”
“That doesn't make it mine.”
Nina held her hands beneath the table. She could feel how easy it would be to make this another dispute in which she was right about the practical point and never quite understood what the other person was resisting.
“You don't need the originals to report this,” she said. “The officer didn't ask for them before he'd talk to you. We can go to Theo now.”
“I heard him.”
“Then—”
Beth looked up. Nina left the sentence unfinished.
“I want the bag,” Beth said. “I don't want to wait for someone to find it in a box next month. I don't want to keep asking a person I used to live with to look after things she didn't agree to be responsible for.”
“Did she ask you to come?”
“She said come before they finish. She also said she'd put it in the van if I couldn't.”
Nina put her fork down. She could see Beth's phone on the bed, the call to the housemate still open in its recent calls.
Nina looked toward the window. “Owen knows people you've lived with. He could be there.”
“He could.”
“It's not only a risk to the bag.”
“I know what he did. I was holding it.”
Beth's voice was sharp, and Nina sat back. Neither ate for a while.
Then Beth reached into her pocket and took out Theo's spare battery. She set it on the table, turned it over and showed Nina the bit of tape on one side. He'd drawn a tiny lightning bolt on it.
“The films aren't on the camera he took,” she said. “Not the finished ones. He doesn't keep them in there. If the camera goes wrong he thinks he'll lose everything.”
“Are they backed up?”
“Some. I don't know which ones. He says they are when he wants me to stop asking.”
A small fond irritation entered her voice. Nina could imagine the boy saying it, his patience with a question he'd answered enough times before the answer was true.
“He made one with a fox,” Beth said. “Out of a brush I used for coloring hair. The bristles were meant to be its tail. I kept moving it off the table because it looked dirty. He'd put it back exactly where it was. Took all weekend to get it across a river.”
“Did it get across?”
“Eventually. I wasn't allowed to see it until it was finished.”
Beth rubbed the tape on the battery with her thumb. Nina thought of the paper tower in Theo's coat pocket, absurd and not disposable. He'd left with what he could carry. His mother had been deciding for years which things neither of them could take.
“You can ask him,” Nina said. “Whether he'd rather wait for it.”
“I know what he'd say.”
“He might—”
“He'd say don't worry about it.” Beth looked up. “He's been saying that to me since he was little. He's allowed to want something even if he thinks it will make my day harder.”
Nina looked at her own bag, full of work references and a change of clothes. She hadn't considered leaving it to make their departure faster. She had carried it through every doorway, assumed it belonged to her wherever she went.
“We could ask somebody else to collect it,” she said.
“Who?”
“Not Adam. Someone from the moving crew could bring it outside. You'd stay in the car.”
Beth considered. “Maybe. I can ask.”
She called the housemate. This time she didn't turn away. Nina heard only Beth's side: the bag description, where she'd put it, a question about the crew, a promise to come soon if she came at all. Beth listened longer than she spoke.
When she hung up, she said, “She can put it by the room door. One of them may carry it out if I call when we get there. They're not sure which load they're taking first.”
It wasn't a guarantee. It was a smaller exposure, perhaps. Nina could have argued for the van again. She knew the argument was still there, unchanged by the fox or the money or the shame of borrowing. Beth knew it too.
“I'd rather go to Theo,” Nina said.
Beth nodded. “I want to get this first.”
“Then I come with you.”
Beth's mouth tightened. Nina heard the instruction in her own words.
“If you'll have me,” she added. She disliked the formality of it, the sense of trying to earn credit for asking. “I'll drive. You can call her from the car. If we see Owen, we leave. We don't try to get past him.”
“You can drive.”
“And Theo stays where he is.”
“He isn't coming. He doesn't even know I'm going.”
Beth picked up her phone, then set it down without calling him. Nina picked up the empty bowls.
Beth took them from her and pushed both into the paper bag.
“One trip,” Nina said. “You can change your mind at any point.”
Beth looked at her. “So can you.”
Nina took her coat off the chair. She put the officer's card in its pocket, beside her own phone, and made sure the car keys were in her hand. She would tell him where they were going before she left. She could do that without asking him to certify that it was a good idea.
At the door she stopped. “Your paper?”
Beth touched the flat pouch beneath her sweatshirt. “Here.”
The copy wasn't in the bag they were going to retrieve. It hadn't moved from Beth's keeping. Nina nodded, opened the door and let Beth step out first.