Ray — Tuesday, November 17, 2026, midday
Ruth had put a knife into his sandwich to hold it together. It was the good bread, the kind with the hard crust that flaked all over the table. He saw the trouble she'd taken and was glad to be home for lunch.
“What's this?” he asked, lifting the top.
“What you asked for.”
“I meant the spread.”
“Try it before you investigate it.”
He did. It was good. She watched him chewing, not asking yet. In a minute she'd ask about the job, which was why she'd made lunch, or partly why. He could love her for the sandwich and be annoyed by it before he'd swallowed.
“I went in to see the police,” he said.
She put her glass down.
“That woman who's missing. I gave her a ride Monday. Nessa saw the notice and called.”
“What woman?”
He got his phone out and showed her. He didn't want her holding it, but she took it and brought it closer to her face. He cut his sandwich again, making quarters of the halves. The bread resisted.
“You didn't tell me,” she said.
“I give people rides sometimes.”
“You tell me about a man you saw changing a tire.”
“I didn't know she was missing.”
Ruth read the notice. She turned the phone toward him as though he might have overlooked something, then returned it to the same place beside his plate.
“Where did you leave her?”
He told her. The words came more smoothly this time. He wasn't grateful for that.
“God,” she said. “Her little girl.”
He tried to eat. The sandwich was too much in his mouth.
“Did you call her?” Ruth asked.
“Who?”
“Nadia. Did you have her number? If she called you—”
“I didn't get her number.”
“No. I suppose you wouldn't.”
Ruth pushed a crumb into the middle of the table with one finger. He was jealous of the care in her face. She got up and brought him the mustard, although he hadn't asked for it. He'd almost asked. She knew him better in these small ways than he could bear to think about this afternoon.
“I wondered why you were so late,” she said. “You could have called me Monday.”
“Sorry.”
She nodded. He looked at the cupboard behind her head. He'd fixed that hinge once and it had lasted fifteen years. She opened and shut it every day. There was a spare in the garage somewhere, still in its packet.
“Is the sink all right?” he asked.
“You tell me. You're the one who's meant to be fixing it.”
He smiled. “After lunch.”
“Before you go somewhere else.”
She wasn't angry. He knew what she sounded like when she was angry. She was waiting for him to finish eating, answer the question, say which part of the week she could rely on.
He told her the spread was good.
“Thank you. Now, about the school.”
There it was. She had an offer at a different cafeteria, hours she liked better and a supervisor who wasn't making her cover the vacancies of two people. Less money at first. She'd already told him all of this. Her cheeks had been a little pink when she first said it. He remembered thinking he ought to take her out somewhere, make an occasion of it; then she'd explained the money.
“You keep asking me,” he said.
“Because you keep saying we'll work it out.”
“We will.”
“Ray.”
He held his sandwich in both hands. “I don't know what you want me to say.”
“That you'll pick up the things I can't pick up if I'm starting there. That if I need you here Wednesday, you'll be here.”
“I am here.”
“You're here eating lunch. It's lovely. I'm glad. It's not Wednesday.”
He laughed then, because of her face, and she laughed too. He had loved that about her long before she'd been his wife: she could be annoyed with him and still notice something funny. Once in Virginia they'd paid for a room with a sea view and looked straight out onto the back of a seafood restaurant. She'd stood on a chair to see over it, naked except for his socks, insisting she would get their money's worth. He reminded her now, and she said it had been New Jersey, and that he always moved their cheap vacations somewhere more expensive.
“All right,” he said. “Tell them yes.”
She looked at him. “I'm going to. That's not quite what I asked.”
He had made an offer. She could have let him have it for a minute.
The new washers for the sink were in the drawer beside the stove. He'd bought them the week before. She opened that drawer to look for something else, and he watched her move the packet without seeing it.
“Can you write down what's needed Wednesday?” he asked.
“I'll show you.”
She took him to the back room. Two cardboard boxes stood on the floor beside the little cupboard. He had been stepping around them since the weekend without asking what they were.
“Those things are coming home from work,” she said. “The rest of them. I need somewhere to put them.”
He lifted a flap. Folders, a cookbook with a broken spine, a mug she had kept at the old school for years. A young man could change jobs with a telephone and a bag of tools. Ruth had accumulated a roomful of things to be taken away quietly without making the people who remained feel she'd stolen the place.
“There's room in the garage.”
“I don't want them in the garage.”
He let the flap fall.
She wanted the loose shelf in the cupboard replaced, something that would hold the weight without sagging. A couple of storage boxes for the papers she meant to keep. She could sort it herself; she'd already said she'd sort it herself. On Wednesday she could be back around one, and if he'd get the things in the morning they could put it right. She opened the cupboard to show him. A packet of paper slid forward and he caught it against his stomach.
“See?” she said.
“You wouldn't load a cupboard like that.”
“I haven't loaded it. That's why we're talking.”
He looked at the space. An easy enough job, if she didn't keep putting it out of his reach by needing it at a particular time. He wanted to take the measurements now, find the board this afternoon, make her pleased before she could say anything else. But he had to go out again. He couldn't tell her what for.
“Write it down,” he said. “I'll get it Wednesday.”
“And be here at one.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
She went back to the kitchen. He stayed with the open cupboard. The mug in the box had a little chip that wouldn't stop anyone using it. He put it on a clear shelf above the papers. Then he went back to finish his sandwich.
After she took her plate away he sat a little longer, finishing the last crust. He could leave the sink until tomorrow. It wasn't dripping much. She had said she was going to take the job, so let her take it; let everything become her decision for a while.
Upstairs the bedroom door closed. A minute later he could hear her making a call in the voice she used with work, cheerful and apologizing for nothing.
He got the washers out. He cleared the cupboard beneath the sink and lay on his back with the old towel under his shoulders. The pipe was cold against his wrist. When she came down he meant to tell her which things had to be kept out of the cupboard until it dried. Instead he asked her to turn the tap on.
She did. They listened together for a drip. There wasn't one.