A door opened upstairs. This time Miles heard it too. He reached the landing first and stopped outside the guest room.
Elena saw past his shoulder. The paperback and mug were gone. The room had been made ready for someone who would not need to pack.
A new white sheet covered the narrow mattress. One chair stood beside it, and on the chair lay the university sweatshirt, dry and neatly folded. It had also remained downstairs. Elena turned, looking toward the stair as if she might see both copies at once.
There was an envelope beneath the folded cuff. Thick cream paper, a bank's blue stamp. Miles stepped into the room and reached for it. His hand stopped above the chair.
“Is that yours?” Elena asked.
He said nothing.
The window glass brightened. Instead of the trees outside, it showed the house's sitting room eleven years earlier. Daniel sat on the floral sofa. He was thirty-six, his hair still dark, one thumb rubbing the leather strap of his watch. Elena knew the movement. He did it when he was about to spend money.
Across from him sat a younger Miles.
At twenty-seven his face had been narrower, his hair longer. He wore a suit that did not fit his shoulders. His hands shook as he accepted the bank envelope. Daniel put a hand briefly on his wrist. In the room behind them, a woman laughed; Elena's own voice, calling Daniel to hurry if they wanted to get to the market.
“She doesn't know,” young Miles said.
Daniel looked toward the doorway. “She doesn't need to. If I'm here, I'll tell her when the time comes.”
“And if you're not?”
“You come on the date. Not before. If you warn her now, she'll go back looking for answers. I need time to put this right before she knows. You tell her enough to let her live.”
The reflection darkened. Elena could see her own face in the glass now, and the man beside her who had helped her out of the lake.
“What did he buy?”
Miles turned toward her. “Elena—”
“What did he buy?”
“Me.”
The room seemed to become smaller around the word. Elena backed out onto the landing. Miles followed, but she held up a hand, and he stopped.
“The guest,” she said.
He nodded.
“You.”
“At the end of the twenty years. If he couldn't fix it another way.”
She put her back against the railing. Far below, the kitchen's clock ticked. It had become loud enough to hear from here.
“You agreed.”
“I did.”
“To die?”
He looked toward the white bed. “To stay. He said it wouldn't hurt. He said I'd have eleven years first.”
“And you believed him?”
“I believed the eleven years.” His voice was rough. “I wasn't being clever.”
Elena could not look away from his face. The young man in the glass had looked scarcely grown, though he had been a year older than she was when she married. She wanted to dismiss him as a fool and found the present man standing in the way of that judgment, tired and wet-haired and frightened.
“How much?”
“Enough to clear what I owed. Enough to start again. I was in debt. I'd stopped opening letters. There was nobody at home I wanted to go back to.”
“So Daniel found you.”
“We met through someone who knew I needed work. I thought he was offering work.”
“He was.”
Miles looked at her sharply. She had meant to hurt him. It worked, and she did not feel better.
“I spent it,” he said. “Every time I thought of giving it back, there was rent, or a supplier, or a broken boiler. Then we opened the café. People began to come in and ask for things I made. I had mornings I wanted to get up for. By then he was dead.”
“You could have told me.”
“Yes.”
“Nine years.”
“I know how long.”
She pushed away from the railing. “Don't snap at me.”
“Then don't say it as if I haven't been counting.”
They stood glaring at each other. Downstairs something scraped the table, a chair moved by no living hand. Neither turned toward it.
“Why three days?” she asked.
“A tap wouldn't turn off at the café. After the plumber came, water appeared in my car. In my bed. Everywhere I went.” He swallowed. “I thought if I came here before you, I could find something. The letter said he had tried. I wanted to see what he'd done.”
“Instead you cooked me dinner.”
“You arrived.”
“You could have told me at the door.”
“And watched you drive away?”
Her face went cold. “You knew that wouldn't work.”
“I didn't know what would happen with you. I've told you that.”
“What did you hope would happen?”
He stared past her toward the blank wall where she saw the blue door. Its surface was still damp.
“Tell me.”
“I hoped you would go in there.”
“And stay?”
He looked at her. The kitchen warmth, the toast, his fingers on hers at the cuff—all of it remained in her body while she waited.
“Yes.”
She slapped him.
The sound startled her more than it seemed to startle him. He turned his face with the blow, then put one hand to his cheek. He did not apologize. For a moment he looked as if he might say something terrible, and she was almost eager to hear it.
“You wanted me to pay,” she said.
“I wanted to live.”
“So did I.”
He lowered his hand. There was a red mark beside his mouth. She went down the stairs, gripping the rail, and he stayed on the landing. The guest room behind him was bright and clean. She heard him shut its door.
In the kitchen, the sweatshirt lay over the chair where they had put it to dry. Elena picked it up and threw it into the corner. Then she sat down because she was shaking again and did not want him to see.
From the sitting room Daniel's voice said, “El? What's happened?”
She turned toward it before she could stop herself.