Miles put the fish on two plates and kept the more broken piece for himself. Elena recognized the gesture and resented him for it.
“Daniel told you what to cook?”
“He told me you liked it.”
“I liked lots of things.”
“I can't make lots of things at once.” He set the pan on the trivet. “There are beans. They survived better.”
She took the chair facing the hall. Miles sat opposite, near the lake door. He had changed his wet socks. He had also offered to change the sweatshirt, and she had said not yet. She did not know what she would do with it if he handed it to her. Daniel's clothes had gone to a charity shop eight years ago. She kept a scarf, a watch and two shirts she had once needed to smell. She did not need to smell them now.
The sauce was sharp with capers. Daniel would have hated them.
“He said no capers,” Elena said.
Miles stopped with his fork raised. “Did he?”
“He called them vegetable grit.”
“Then it's fortunate he's not eating.”
The words landed between them. Miles lowered the fork. “I'm sorry.”
Elena looked at her plate. She wanted to be outraged. Instead a laugh slipped out, small and unwilling. Daniel would have said exactly that about someone else's food and then spent the rest of dinner trying to find out whether he had upset them.
“You don't have to like him,” she said.
“I liked him.”
“You've been saving his sweatshirt for eleven years.”
“I haven't been saving it. I've been wearing it.” He held out the cuff. Around her red repair were two newer seams, one gray, one black. “That one's mine. The black thread belongs to Sana. She said I was ruining the café's reputation.”
“Your wife?”
“My partner in the café. She has better investments than me.”
Elena took another mouthful. The beans were good. Miles noticed her reaching for them and pushed the bowl closer without comment. She wondered how many people he had fed. His hands moved confidently among plates and hot pans, unlike the rest of him. The spoon he had held at the door lay beside his glass, licked clean.
“Where's this café?”
“In Marsh Street. About two hours from here.”
“Do you always cook?”
“I pretend I'm above the breakfast rush and then interfere with everyone.” He ate a caper deliberately. “It's a serious management flaw.”
“And you shut it for this?”
“Sana's there.”
She heard the evasion, but the food and his sudden smile had made her unwilling to return to the letter. She cut the fish into smaller pieces. The lake outside had lost its silver and become a dull blue. Light lay along the dock rail like a hand placed there.
“Daniel hated me eating slowly,” she said. “He never admitted it. He would ask whether I was finished because he wanted to wash up. Then he'd look at my plate as if it were a delayed train.”
“My mother used to do that. Except she admitted it.”
“You didn't learn from her?”
He looked at her plate, caught himself and smiled. “Apparently I did.”
She let the smile stay for a moment. He was good-looking when the fear left his face. His hair needed cutting. There was a tiny scar near his left ear and a yellow mark on his thumb, probably turmeric. Daniel would never have let a spice stain remain on his hand through a meal. He would scrub it, complaining, with the green side of a sponge.
Elena reached for the wine. “What is it he wanted you to tell me?”
Miles wiped his mouth. The ease went out of him so quickly that she regretted the question before he answered.
“You remember the accident.”
The glass stopped midway to her lips. “Of course.”
“How much?”
“We went out in the boat. The weather changed. I fell in. Daniel got me out.”
“Did you ever ask him how?”
“He swam.”
“He told me he couldn't reach you.”
She set down the glass hard enough to spill. Miles did not move to wipe it.
“Then he lied to you.”
“Elena—”
“He spent years afraid whenever I went near deep water. He watched the weather before we drove here. We had rows about it. You don't get to sit in that shirt and tell me he didn't save me.”
“I'm telling you he did.”
Behind Miles the wallpaper moved.
At first Elena thought the light had changed. The kitchen walls were painted cream, but in the passage to the sitting room a narrow strip of green leaves appeared beside the doorframe. Then another. She knew the pattern: tiny fern shapes on pale paper, the old paper from their honeymoon. The owners had stripped it fifteen years ago.
“Look behind you,” she said.
Miles turned. He stood so abruptly that the chair fell against the wall. The sound made her grip the table, but the wallpaper kept spreading, quietly, like damp soaking into a ceiling.
The sitting room beyond it was smaller than it had been. The modern sofa was gone. In its place stood the sagging floral one with a blanket over the torn arm. Daniel's sandals lay beside it, one overturned. On the table was a bowl of peaches, including the bruised one Elena had bought because the woman at the market said it was sweetest.
She rose. Miles reached for her wrist and stopped short of touching it.
“Don't go in yet.”
“That's my bag.”
It lay on the floral sofa, the little green honeymoon suitcase she had thrown away when its zip broke. Her cardigan hung over it. The sleeve moved in air coming from the open window.
Elena crossed the kitchen slowly. The present table stayed under her hand until she reached the doorframe. Then she put her palm on the fern paper. It was warm.
From the room, Daniel said, “If you eat the bad peach first, what have you gained?”
Elena made a noise she would not have recognized from herself. Miles caught her elbow this time, firmly. She did not pull away.
There was no man on the sofa. No one by the window. Only the peaches, the sandals and the cardigan with its empty sleeve.
“El?” Daniel said. “Come here a minute.”
She stepped across the threshold. Miles's fingers slid from her arm, and the room smelled of lake air and her husband's soap.