On Sunday Lena stayed in bed until Daniel brought coffee.
She had cancelled the sketching walk, and for the first hour she resented him for a choice he hadn't asked her to make. He sat on the edge of the mattress, reading something on his phone, and she wanted to say she could have been outside with a pencil instead of watching him scroll.
Then he put the phone down.
“Do you want to go out later?”
“Where?”
“Not telling.”
She looked at him.
“You hate that,” he said. “I remember. All right. The old sail loft. The doors are open this afternoon, and they've got photographs of the harbour before the road went in.”
“You looked it up?”
“Yes.”
She sat up and took the coffee.
“Let's go.”
They ate breakfast late. He did not ask why she'd been sharp over the missing milk or why she had suddenly stopped. She didn't explain the sketching walk again. They both had things in the room they were tired of stepping around.
The sail loft smelled of old wood and paint. A local group had borrowed it for the afternoon. The photographs were pinned to boards, nothing grand, with little typed labels some patient person had written.
Lena liked a picture of the quay before the sheds became shops. She stood looking at the doorway that would eventually become Jo's café. Daniel came beside her.
“That's yours,” he said.
“Jo's.”
“Both, a bit.”
She smiled. “Don't tell her.”
The building in the photograph had a crooked roof and three windows instead of two. Lena took out the green notebook. She drew a quick line, then another.
Daniel waited without telling her they had more boards to see. When he got tired of standing he sat on a low stool nearby. He asked a volunteer about the old boats, and Lena listened to their ordinary conversation while she drew.
When she finished, she showed him the sketch.
“You've left the ugly roof in,” he said.
“It was an interesting roof.”
“Jo would have had it fixed by lunch.”
Lena laughed. He knew her family well enough to get that right.
They walked to the water afterward. The wind was cooler than it had been at Bea's birthday. Lena tried not to let the quay become only the place she had kissed Nate.
Daniel held her hand. She held his firmly, then worried he would feel the effort. She loosened her fingers, feeling ridiculous.
At the old harbour steps he stopped.
“This is where we went after Jo's dinner,” he said.
“I remember.”
“You asked me whether I ever did anything that wasn't useful.”
“You had repaired her oven and then washed every plate.”
“I was trying to impress you.”
“By washing plates.”
“It worked.”
She looked at him. “Eventually.”
They stood where they'd stood three years before. Lena could remember her light shoes, the glass of wine making the stones look brighter, Daniel keeping just enough distance that she had wondered if he wasn't interested. Then he had said he wanted to see her again, and she had spent the walk home trying not to grin.
“I did choose you,” she said.
He looked at her before answering.
“I know.”
She almost challenged him, then saw how tired he looked. She put her hand against his cheek instead.
He kissed her there by the water, nothing like the hurried kiss she'd given him after confessing. This one took time. She let herself want him without checking whether wanting him repaired anything.
At home he made a simple supper. She drew at the kitchen table while it cooked, adding the café's current windows beneath the old roof. He looked over her shoulder and asked whether the building was going to collapse under the extra line.
“Probably. Artistic risk.”
He put down her plate beside the notebook rather than making her clear it away. She loved him for that small thing, inconvenient as love had become.
Afterward they sat with the window open. Daniel had his legs stretched out, and Lena rested her feet against his thigh. Somewhere downstairs a door slammed twice, followed by an apology.
“Jo asked exactly when we're back,” Lena said. “So she can put the week after on the rota.”
“Saturday.”
“From the hotel?”
“Yes.”
“Tuesday to Saturday. Four nights.”
He nodded.
She remembered the window seat. The dressing gown. Somebody else making breakfast after all this work. She had looked at the photograph so often that the room felt almost familiar.
“Do you know if breakfast is included the last day?” she asked.
“I think so.”
“I'll check. I might ask if we can arrive a bit earlier too.”
He moved his hand over her ankle. She smiled.
Later, when he went to brush his teeth, Lena opened the shared wedding note. The old reference number was still there beneath travel, where she'd put it in February. She copied it into a fresh note so she could call during the hotel's ordinary morning hours.
Then she put the phone away and joined Daniel in the bedroom.