By noon, Lena had decided the table looked wrong.
The flowers were too far apart. The cloth hung low on one side. From the doorway you couldn't see the little yellow jars at all, only a white rectangle cutting the garden in half.
She put down the jug she was carrying and moved the end chair.
“Not there,” Jo said behind her.
“Just for a second.”
“I have people waiting.”
“I know. I'm making room.”
She dragged the chair another foot. Its leg caught in the cloth, pulling one corner down and tipping a jar. Lena caught it before it fell, but water ran into the bread basket.
Jo closed her eyes.
“I'll change it,” Lena said.
“The bread as well.”
“Yes.”
“And then you are serving lunch.”
Lena lifted the wet basket. Two tourists near the gate pretended not to watch.
They had agreed to try the wedding table on a Monday because Mondays were usually quiet. This Monday the morning rain had stopped and everybody in Greyhaven appeared to need lunch outdoors. The trial table took six places out of use. Lena had imagined they could seat customers there afterward, but the cloth Jo had borrowed wasn't one anybody wanted tomato soup spilled over.
She carried the basket into the kitchen.
“The flowers work,” she said, partly to herself.
“The flowers are lovely. There's a family outside wondering if we're going to feed them.”
“I said I'd change the bread.”
Jo reached for a clean basket. Her hair was coming loose at the back, and there was flour on the shoulder of her black shirt.
“I need you to be my second pair of hands today, Len. Not the bride.”
The words stung more than they should have. Lena had been awake since six, had already taken forty orders, and had walked into work carrying a bag full of oranges rather than candle holders.
“I am helping.”
“Then go and take their order.”
She did. The tourists wanted six things changed between two sandwiches. A child at the next table knocked a drink into his father's lap. Someone asked if the music could be quieter, then another customer asked whether they had any music on at all.
For twenty minutes Lena was glad to have no room in her head for Nate.
Then she turned from the counter with a tray and saw him at the door.
He had a paper bag under one arm and a dark jacket she didn't know. That was the first thing her mind offered her: he used to wear a brown one. Then his face became clear. Same mouth. Shorter hair. A line beside one eye that hadn't been there when he'd left.
He saw her seeing him.
Neither smiled.
A man behind him said, “Are you in the queue?”
“Sorry.” Nate moved aside.
That tiny, ordinary movement hurt her. He knew how to stand in a doorway. He knew how to move out of somebody's way. For five years, in the version she had carried, he hadn't known how to do anything except disappear.
She put the tray on the counter before she dropped it.
Jo came through with a plate of soup. She stopped at Lena's side.
“Oh,” her sister said.
Nate walked toward them. He didn't hurry. He glanced at Jo, then back at Lena.
“Hi.”
She could have said the same thing. It would have cost nothing.
“Are you eating?” she asked.
He looked at the menu over her shoulder. “If you're open.”
“We're very open.”
“I can see that.”
“What would you like?”
“I hadn't got that far.”
Jo put the soup down. “There are menus on the tables.”
It was not an invitation to stand at the counter talking to Lena. He understood it.
“Right. Thanks.”
He went into the garden. He chose a small table beside the wall, not the wedding table. Lena hated that she noticed his choice and hated more that it made her grateful.
“Take these to four,” Jo said.
“I'm fine.”
“I gave you an order, not a diagnosis.”
Lena almost laughed. She carried the soup out, accepted the family's late request for chips and went back for a pencil. She could do her job. Nate Ellis sitting beneath the pear tree would not make her forget how to write down two coffees.
Except when she reached his table, he asked for the wrong sandwich.
“The ham one,” he said. “With the mustard.”
“We don't have that anymore.”
“You used to.”
“Five years ago.”
His face changed. “Yes.”
She looked down at the pad.
“We have chicken, cheese, tuna. Soup. The board's inside.”
“Cheese, then.”
“Toast it?”
“Please.”
She wrote it down.
“And a coffee.”
“Still black?”
The question came out before she could stop it.
He looked up. For a moment she was twenty-three again, knowing things about him that weren't written on any menu.
“Yes,” he said. “Still black.”
She walked away.
In the kitchen she told Jo the order, then drank a glass of water too quickly. It made her cough.
“You can ask him to leave,” Jo said.
“He's bought lunch.”
“I don't care.”
“I do.”
Lena set the glass down. “I'm not going to have a scene in the garden.”
“Good. We're short on clean spoons already.”
This time Lena did laugh. Jo squeezed the back of her neck, just once, then handed her Nate's coffee.
When Lena brought it out, he was looking at the wedding table. The flowers had been set straight again. At the end lay the folded seating sketch with LENA + DANIEL written across the top in her own handwriting.
“Congratulations,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“Bea told me.”
“Bea told me you were here.”
“She didn't say you'd be surprised.”
Lena looked at him.
He moved the coffee a little away from the edge. “I thought you knew.”
“Why would I know?”
“She said you wanted me to come.”
A chair scraped behind Lena. She stepped aside so a customer could pass, then stepped back.
“I didn't.”
He stared at her. He wasn't doing the old Nate thing, stretching an awkward moment until somebody laughed. His eyes dropped briefly toward the table.
“Okay.”
“Who said that?”
“Bea.”
“I never asked her.”
“Then I need to talk to her.”
“You do.”
He nodded. “Could I talk to you as well? Not here. When you're finished.”
There was a patch of old wanting underneath her anger. She'd spent months imagining this conversation. Years ago, before Daniel, she had pictured meeting Nate in supermarkets, on the beach, outside pubs. In those pictures she was always dressed beautifully and able to say something final. She was never holding a coffee tray with soup on her wrist.
“Not today.”
“All right.”
He said it without arguing, which made her wish he had argued. She could have hated that more easily.
His sandwich arrived with a corner cut off. It was a small café mistake; the kitchen worker had thought it was for the child at table three. Lena saw the uneven bread as she put it down.
“It's all there. Just divided strangely.”
Nate looked at the missing triangle, which was lying beside the main sandwich.
“I thought it was a local custom.”
“Visitors pay extra for triangles.”
She heard herself. The reply had come easily, from the part of her that had once spent whole evenings making him laugh.
He smiled. Not big. Not a victory.
It made it worse.
She went back inside before he could say anything else.
Lunch kept moving. The family left, the tourists stayed, the child who'd spilled the drink came up to apologize because his father made him. Lena crouched to say he didn't need to look so worried. When she stood, she saw Nate folding his napkin.
He paid at the counter. Left an ordinary tip, nothing generous enough to feel like an apology. He had the paper bag again.
“Bea gave me your number,” he said. “I won't use it if you don't want me to.”
“Don't call me at night.”
“I won't.”
“I'm not agreeing to anything.”
“I know.”
He left. Lena watched him cross the quay and had the sudden, absurd wish to run after him and ask what was in the bag.
Instead she cleared his plate.
He had eaten every bit of the sandwich.
By three, Jo had taken the flowers off the trial table and put paying customers there on the bare wood. Lena couldn't object. She had left her sister running lunch alone for too long.
They closed the garden section at four. Together they folded the borrowed cloth. The wet corner had dried in a stiff patch.
“I'll wash it,” Lena said.
“You'll see if it can be washed. It's not ours.”
“I know.”
Jo looked at her across the table.
“I wanted today to be nice,” Lena said.
“It was nice for some people. You fed them.”
“For us.”
Her sister rested her hands on the cloth. “I want your wedding to be lovely. I can't keep making the business disappear to get it ready.”
Lena looked toward the kitchen, where the last lunch dishes were stacked beside the sink. She had meant to do them twenty minutes ago.
“I'll finish those.”
“Thank you.”
Jo didn't follow her. She went to the till, counting the day's money while Lena washed plates. For once they didn't fill the end of the day with talk.
At home Daniel was in the shower. Lena took her shoes off in the hallway and stood looking at the two towels hanging over the bathroom door. His was green. Hers had a hole in one corner and she liked it better than the new one they'd bought.
She wanted to tell him before the news became something she had kept.
When he came out, she was sitting on the bed.
“Nate's back.”
Daniel stopped rubbing his hair.
“What?”
“He came into the café.”
“Today?”
“Yes.”
“I had no idea.”
She believed the surprise in his voice. She wanted to.
“He says Bea thought I asked him to come.”
Daniel draped the towel over his shoulder. “Did you?”
“No.”
“Then she's got something muddled.”
“I'll call her.”
“Of course.” He sat beside Lena. His hair was still wet enough to drip onto his shirt. “How was it?”
She hadn't realized she wanted somebody to ask that. Not what did he say, not is he staying, not why had she let him buy lunch.
“Awful,” she said. “Normal. I don't know.”
Daniel took her hand.
“Did he explain anything?”
“No. I was working.”
“You don't owe him a conversation.”
“I know.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder. His skin smelled of soap and the warm dust of work.
For a while they sat without talking. Lena could feel Daniel's thumb move over the stone of her engagement ring. She looked down at their hands and let the familiar sight settle her.
Her phone buzzed in her bag. A message from Bea, asking whether lunch had been busy.
Lena straightened.
Very, she wrote. Nate came. He said you told him I wanted him back. I didn't. Can you call me?
She sent it before she could decide on a nicer version.