Bea came to the café carrying no flowers.
She sat at the little table by the window while Lena finished serving two lunches. Jo took the next order without asking, giving them the few minutes they needed.
Lena sat opposite her. She had written nothing down. She didn't want this to become a test Bea could fail by choosing a slightly different word.
“Tell me the request again,” she said. “What he wanted you to do.”
Bea folded her hands.
“He said you wanted to see Nate before you got married. That you didn't want to leave things like this forever. I asked whether Nate should call, and he said it would be better if he came.”
“Anything else?”
“Whether he could stay long enough for you to be sure.”
Lena looked at the table. Same words. Bea had said them on the first night.
“To be sure,” Lena repeated.
“I thought he meant the old hurt was over.”
“So did I.”
Then she had thought something different: he wanted a comparison. He wanted her to choose him with Nate standing close enough to tempt her. The job he had refused, the days he'd made, the hurt he hadn't hidden. It had been an ugly test, but one a frightened man might make because he wanted to be chosen.
The hotel had been cancelled before any of it.
“Was it before he spoke to you?” Lena asked.
“The postponing conversation?”
“The cancellation. The morning after that conversation.”
Bea thought for a moment. “He asked me a few days after. I was finishing the display at the shop. You'd already told me you'd cut the guest list.”
Lena nodded.
Bea reached across the table, then stopped before touching her.
“What do you think he was doing?”
“I need to ask him.”
“Do you want me there?”
“No.”
“Do you want me nearby?”
“Yes.”
Bea nodded. “I'll stay at the shop. Call me.”
Lena stood. Jo met her at the counter and took the apron from her hands.
“You don't have to come back today,” she said.
“I know.”
“Don't decide what you have to do just to make this less embarrassing.”
Lena looked at her sister. For once she didn't have a reply.
Outside, she walked home instead of calling a car. She needed the streets to take their ordinary amount of time. She passed the bakery, the little shop where they'd bought the frame, the corner where she'd watched Daniel drive away in his wet blue shirt.
She could not bear for every place to become evidence. She still knew them as places where she'd been happy.
Daniel was home. The front door stood partly open, as if he'd been watching for her from the hallway.
She went inside. He closed it behind her.
“The email's on my phone,” he said.
“I believe the date.”
He nodded.
They stayed in the hallway for a moment. Then Lena went into the kitchen. She chose the chair opposite his usual place.
He sat.
“Why did you bring Nate back?” she asked.
“I've told you—”
“Did you want me to leave you?”
His face changed. Not surprise. Something worse to watch: recognition that the question had finally reached the place he had been avoiding.
Lena held still.
“Yes,” he said.
The word was quiet. It was complete.
She looked at him. She had expected a defence, something she could push against. A wrong intention attached to a man who still wanted the same future. Instead he had answered the question she hadn't known she was asking for weeks.
“You wanted me to go back to him.”
“I thought you might.”
“Because you didn't want the wedding.”
He nodded. “I didn't want to get married.”
Her stomach turned. She gripped the edge of the chair below the table.
“Then why didn't you tell me?”
“I tried to say we should postpone.”
“You let me make it about the meal and the chairs.”
“I know.”
“You held me while I cried. Then we carried on.”
He looked down.
“I didn't want to hurt you.”
She laughed once, with no happiness in it.
“So you invited the man who hurt me.”
His eyes came back to hers, full of shame she could see and could no longer use as reassurance.
“I thought if you chose him, you'd have something you wanted. You wouldn't just have lost me.”
“And you wouldn't have left.”
He didn't answer.
“Say it.”
“Yes.”
The flat was quiet. The fridge made its small clicking noise. Lena heard it with an absurd clarity.
He had asked Bea to bring Nate home. He had told her it was what Lena wanted. He had hoped old love would be strong enough to carry Lena out of his life, and leave him standing there as the man she hadn't chosen.
Lena looked down at her ring.
All this time she had been trying to make him want the wedding properly. All this time he had wanted her to be the one who stopped it.