Bea called while Daniel was opening a tin of tomatoes.
Lena took the phone into the bedroom, leaving the door open. She didn't want this to look like a secret conversation. She wasn't sure why she cared how it looked.
“I'm so sorry,” Bea said.
“For what?”
“I thought you knew he was coming.”
“You said that this morning. Why would I know?”
“Daniel asked me.”
Lena looked toward the kitchen. She could see one corner of the counter, a tea towel hanging from its handle.
“Asked you what?”
“He said you wanted to see Nate. Before the wedding. Get things settled.”
“Daniel said that?”
“Yes. A few weeks ago.”
“And you didn't ask me?”
“I thought it was awkward for you. I thought that's why he'd asked.”
Lena sat on the bed. Her thumb pressed hard into the edge of the phone.
“Tell me what he said.”
Bea breathed out. “He said, 'Lena wants to see him before we get married. She doesn't want to leave things like this forever.' I asked whether he meant Nate should call. He said it would be better if he came. And could he stay long enough for you to be sure.”
“Sure of what?”
“I thought he meant sure everything was finished. I should have asked.”
From the kitchen came the little scrape of a spoon inside the tin. Daniel was making sauce for the pasta they ate when neither of them wanted to cook properly.
“I never said any of that.”
“I know that now.”
“Did you tell Nate I wanted him?”
“To come. Yes.”
Lena closed her eyes.
Nate had looked at her over his coffee as if she'd changed the terms of something he had agreed to. He hadn't understood her anger because he'd thought she had invited it.
“I'll call him,” Bea said. “I'll tell him I got it wrong.”
“Tell him I didn't ask.”
“I will.”
“And don't ask anybody else to do anything for me.”
“Okay.” Bea's voice was small, unlike her. “Lena, I really thought I was helping.”
“I know.”
She did know. That was part of what made it so difficult. Bea had been her friend through the five years in which she could not say Bea's brother's name without feeling foolish. They had found other things to talk about. There had been births, shop troubles, dinners, one awful attempt at cutting Lena's fringe. Their friendship wasn't a secret plan to deliver Nate back into her life.
“I'll see you tomorrow,” Lena said, because she didn't want this call to end with Bea crying somewhere alone.
“Will you?”
“Yes.”
She put down the phone and went into the kitchen.
Daniel looked up. His hand was still on the spoon.
“Was that Bea?”
“You invited him.”
He didn't answer at once.
“You told her I wanted him here.”
“Lena—”
“You just told me you had no idea.”
He put the spoon down. A red mark spread over the white plate he'd used to rest it on.
“I didn't know he'd come today.”
“That isn't what you said.”
“No.”
She stood on the other side of the small kitchen, with the table between them. It was absurd that they could eat together with their knees touching in the morning and need furniture between them at night.
“Why?” she asked.
“I thought seeing him might help.”
“Help what?”
“You. Us. You never got an answer from him.”
“So you sent for one.”
“It wasn't meant to be like that.”
“But it was.”
He leaned against the counter. “Every time his name comes up, you go somewhere else. Even when you tell me you're fine. I know he hurt you.”
“I don't need you to fix it.”
“I know.”
“You didn't know when you called Bea.”
“No. I thought I could do something good. Get it over with before we got married.”
She tried to imagine that phone call. Daniel in the van after work, asking Bea for this thoughtful thing. Daniel picturing an old hurt removed from their future like a splinter.
He came toward her. She stepped aside.
“I shouldn't have said you asked,” he said. “And I shouldn't have lied just now.”
“Then why did you?”
“Because I saw your face. I saw I'd got it wrong.”
He sounded ashamed. She had known him ashamed before, usually over small things—a promised call to his mother left too late, a shelf he had put off fixing until it fell. This was larger. She didn't know what to do with the same lowered voice attached to it.
“So what's supposed to happen now?”
“Nothing you don't want.”
“That's late.”
“Yes.”
The sauce began to spit. Daniel turned off the heat without looking away from her.
She didn't forgive him over dinner. They ate because they had to eat, and because throwing away food would not make any of this less strange. He asked once if she wanted him to call Nate. She said no so quickly he put his fork down.
Later, on the sofa, he sat at the far end until she moved her foot against his thigh. She wanted the touch. She was angry at him and still wanted his hand around her ankle.
He didn't use it as permission to start explaining again. For that she was grateful.
The next day, Tuesday, Lena told Jo only enough to account for her bad mood. Her sister looked up from slicing a cake.
“He invited Nate?”
“Bea thought I wanted it.”
“Did Daniel think that?”
“He says he thought I needed to see him.”
Jo set the knife down. “And do you?”
“I don't know.”
Her sister didn't tell her what the answer should be. Instead she handed her the cake plate. “Then don't book yourself into anything while you're deciding.”
Lena spent the morning doing exactly that in other people's lives. She accepted a garden lunch booking. She rearranged a collection time. She promised a customer they could find a way to fit a wheelchair at the best window table.
At one she caught herself examining the yellow jars Bea had left, deciding whether to ask for taller flowers. She put one back and went to clear a table.
Daniel messaged at four.
Still beach? I can finish by six.
She looked at the words for a long time. The beach had been their plan before Nate. She didn't want to lose every pleasant thing because Daniel had done one hurtful, foolish thing. She also didn't want him to think she had stopped being angry.
Yes. I'll meet you by the van.
At six she bought two bags of chips. One had too much vinegar, the way Daniel liked it. The paper warmed her palms as she walked down the street behind Bell Street, where his van was parked beside the house he was working on.
She heard Nate before she saw him.
“Then why tell her that?”
Lena slowed.
Daniel stood with his back to the van. Nate faced him, both hands hanging loose at his sides. Neither looked at her. They weren't shouting, but the space between them was ugly.
“I've said it was a mistake,” Daniel said.
He reached into the van through the open window and took out an envelope.
Lena stopped three steps from the corner.
Daniel held it out. Nate looked at it, then at him.
“Seriously?”
“Take it.”
“You think that helps?”
“It covers what you've spent.”
Nate took the envelope. He didn't tuck it away. He held it between two fingers as if something unpleasant had come through a letter box.
“What is that?” Lena asked.
Both men turned.
Daniel's face changed first, almost into a smile. Then he saw hers.
“Lena.”
She walked toward them. The chips were still hot. It was a ridiculous thing to carry into this conversation, two dinners bought in the hope that a familiar evening could make her feel better.
“What did you give him?”
“Travel money,” Daniel said.
Nate let out a short laugh.
“For what?” she asked.
“To go,” Nate said.
Daniel looked at him. “Before this gets worse.”
“This?”
Lena put both bags on the bonnet. Oil spread through one corner of the paper.
“You invited him here. Now you're paying him to leave?”
“It was weeks ago,” Daniel said. “And yes, it was wrong. I've told you that. I didn't want you having to deal with this when you're trying to get married.”
“To you.”
“Yes. To me.”
Nate glanced at her hand. Her ring caught the evening light. He looked away so quickly she almost wished he hadn't.
“Did you ask for the money?” she asked him.
“No.”
“Then why take it?”
He looked at the envelope. “That's a good question.”
“Answer it.”
“Because he keeps acting as if he can decide where I stand.”
“And you taking his money stops that?”
“No,” Nate said. “Probably not.”
Daniel folded his arms. “We weren't going to have this conversation here.”
“What conversation?” Lena asked.
“The one you don't want while people walk past.”
A couple had crossed to the other pavement. Lena saw them notice the three of them and immediately find something interesting on the other side of the road.
She hated being given back her own fear as a reason to stop asking.
“Then we'll have it at home.” She looked at Daniel. “Our home.”
Nate pressed the envelope against his thigh. “I'm not going to explain five years beside his van.”
“You haven't explained five years anywhere.”
“I know.”
That quiet answer unsettled her more than his anger.
She took one bag of chips and handed it to Daniel. “You can drive. I want to walk.”
“Lena, the beach—”
“Not tonight.”
She left before either of them could turn her change of plan into something they had granted her.
At the flat she sat on the kitchen floor and ate chips from the paper. Daniel arrived ten minutes later, carrying the other bag. He stood by the door until she moved her knee so he could sit beside her.
For a while they ate in silence. He didn't deserve the ordinary picture of them down there, but she was too tired to stand apart from everything she knew.
“How much?” she asked.
“Six hundred.”
“That's a lot of travel.”
“He'd taken time off.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“No. I assumed.”
“Stop assuming things for people.”
He put the bag between his feet. “I wanted to undo it.”
“You can't send him back where he was and make yesterday not happen.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What would you have wanted me to do?”
“Ask me before you called Bea.”
He looked at her. There was no answer worth making.
Lena swallowed the last chip even though it had gone cold.
“How well did you know him?”
“We worked on some of the same places. Years ago. You know that.”
“I thought you said hello if you saw each other.”
“It was more than that sometimes.”
“Friends?”
“For a bit.”
“When we were together?”
Daniel nodded.
She remembered the two of them in a room five years earlier, Nate's hand on her back, Daniel leaning against a door talking about a job. She had never thought there was a history she wasn't part of. They had seemed like men talking about work.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“You never asked.”
She looked at him until he dropped his eyes.
“That's a bad answer,” he said.
“Yes.”
His hand moved toward hers on the floor, then stopped.
“I'm not trying to take anything away from you.”
“You've already taken the beach.”
He looked at the cold chip bag, and for a moment his face showed the same loss she felt. It was a small evening. It should have been easy to keep.
She got up, put the paper in the bin and went to wash her hands.
Daniel stayed on the floor.