At the house, Elena had to climb the kitchen steps on hands and knees.
Miles came behind her. He did not offer help she would have had to refuse. Once inside, he shut the solid door and turned the bolt, though they both looked at it afterward as if it might be an absurd precaution.
Elena opened the pouch and set her dry phone on the counter.
The kitchen was cream again. The fern paper had gone. Their dinner sat untouched, white sauce set at the edges. Miles looked at it, then lifted both plates into the sink.
“That was a waste of fish,” he said.
“You can complain to the house.”
“I'd like to speak to its manager.”
She leaned against the counter. The laugh was painful but it loosened something in her chest. Miles found dry towels in the downstairs cupboard and handed her three. She took her bag into the little toilet under the stair. Its tiny electric heater smelled of dust when she switched it on.
For a while she struggled with her clothes. The wet skirt would not come over her hips. Her fingers shook too much for the shirt buttons. She began to cry, furiously, because the buttons were small and stupid and the designer had never tried to fasten them after nearly drowning. She took a breath, another, and pulled the shirt over her head instead.
Her bag had stayed dry in the car's back seat. Miles had fetched it while she sat in the doorway. The car itself was empty of water now, with both doors shut. He had not tried to drive it.
She put on warm trousers and a thin wool sweater, wrapped the towel around her wet hair and returned to the kitchen. Miles had changed into a T-shirt. The sweatshirt hung over the back of a chair near the heater. He was moving his hands beneath hot running water, grimacing.
“Are you hurt?”
“Just cold. They keep forgetting what to do.” He tried opening and closing his fingers. “I'm making tea. It may involve dropping everything.”
“Let me.”
“You can sit.”
“Miles.”
He looked at her, then moved aside. She filled the kettle. The familiarity of that task steadied her more than his care had. A kettle filled, a switch pushed down. She could hear it beginning to heat. The cupboard with mugs remained where it had always been.
Miles cut bread for toast. After a while she saw him taking too much trouble over it, slicing thinly, brushing crumbs off the board as though a customer might be watching. He caught her looking.
“I'm hungry,” he said. “I don't know why. I should be above it.”
“You can be terrified and hungry.”
“Good. I'm doing very well at both.”
He put butter and a jar of marmalade on the table. She spread one piece while he drank his tea too fast and burnt his mouth. The marmalade had great bitter strips of peel. Elena normally disliked those. She ate them because the bitterness made her mouth feel awake.
The lake door rattled once. They both stopped chewing. It rattled again, a gust pushing at the frame, and Miles stood to make certain the bolt was still closed. When he came back, Elena had put the second slice on his plate.
“Do you have music at the café?” she asked.
“Sana chooses it. Otherwise we'd have the same four albums forever.”
“What are the four?”
“I'm not telling a dance teacher that.”
“Coward.”
“Yes.” He smiled. “Old soul music mostly. Things I know where the beat is.”
“You don't need to know. You need to hear.”
“That's what people who know say.”
She warmed her hands around the mug. He had a quick smile, one that arrived before he had decided whether to permit it. She wanted to see it again. The desire surprised her by being so ordinary.
“Do you dance?”
“At work. Very badly. Sana has evidence. I tried to reach a top shelf and knocked a tray into the sink. She made it look as if I was keeping time.”
“Was anything on the tray?”
“Twelve teaspoons. We still lose one every day. I think they're breeding somewhere we can't reach.”
His phone lit beside the breadboard. This time there was a photograph: Sana holding an enormous white mug in both hands with a solemn face. Behind her the café was full of coats and chairs and sunlight. A man had leaned out of the frame to keep his face from the photograph. A little chalkboard advertised soup, with the word hot underlined three times.
Miles looked at it for a long time. Elena could see a change in his mouth before he turned the screen toward her.
“We made that shelf,” he said, pointing above the counter. “It sags. Every time I say I'll fix it she puts another tin on it.”
“It looks warm.”
“It is when the door shuts. Nobody shuts the door.” He touched the image with one finger, not enlarging it. “It's ours.”
She reached for the bread and tore a crust in half. She could hear him breathing. Outside the lake lapped gently below the dock, behaving as if it had not tried to take them.
“What do you want to do when you get back?” she asked.
He looked up. “Sleep.”
“After that.”
“Find out if we're still paying for a freezer we returned in June. Argue with Sana. Make something nobody has ordered.”
“That doesn't sound like much.”
“It's a lot, if I'm there.”
She let the crust lie on her plate. His thumb rested on the edge of the phone. She had the sudden sense of him leaning away from a ledge only he could see.
“Why won't the road let you leave?”
He put the phone facedown. “Daniel brought me here.”
“Eleven years ago.”
“Yes.”
“What did you agree to do?”
Miles wiped his palms on his trousers. “I agreed to come back today.”
“That's not enough.”
“I know.”
He looked at her across the table. She waited. The kettle clicked as its metal cooled. At last he got up and said he would check the upstairs windows, and she nearly put a hand on his arm to stop him. Instead she watched him go.
The sweatshirt on the chair was steaming gently. She took it down and turned it, so the inside would dry. The fabric was thinner than she remembered. Someone had worn a small hole near the pocket and stitched it in dark thread.
When Miles came back, she had not found a new question he might answer. He stood beside her, close enough that she could feel the warmth from his tea. He reached for the cuff at the same time she did. Their hands met on the red seam.
Neither moved for a second. Then Elena let go. He spread the sweatshirt over the chair and put another piece of bread in the toaster.
Upstairs, a door opened.