By dinner on the second day, Ivo had managed to burn one tray of onions and discovered the kitchen still wanted them.
Nessa scraped them into a bowl. “They're not ruined. They're an accent.”
“I believe I have a gift.”
“You have an accent.”
The long table beneath the ferns was taking shape. No two sections were the same height. Alma had arranged cushions under the worst discrepancy and was inspecting the result as if people might choose to use it intelligently.
Ivo reached for the blue serving bowl. It wasn't there.
“Lent to the families upstairs,” Nessa said.
“The green one?”
“Already lent.”
“Why do we own bowls?”
“There are children eating upstairs. Use a pot.”
He took down a pot and carried it out himself. Warm steam rose through the ferns, slowly here, enough to bead on the underside of a leaf. Someone had strung a line between railings to dry dishcloths. A child was using the lowest cloth as a curtain in a play that had no audience yet.
Mara appeared with Suri. She had changed out of her work clothes and into a dark shirt Ivo hadn't seen. Her hair was loose. A short, ridiculous pleasure went through him: she had dressed for dinner with him, even if she hadn't.
“Come here,” he said, then heard himself making an instruction out of an invitation. “Or anywhere. Alma's doing dangerous things with cushions.”
“I'm improving your circulation,” Alma said.
Mara sat opposite him. She tested the chair with one foot before entrusting it with the rest of herself. He loved that: the private survey of anything that might have to bear a load.
Dev arrived carrying his speakers and found Nessa's look already prepared.
“Quiet music,” he said.
“Please leave it off till we've eaten,” she said. “I've been listening to requests all day.”
He set the speakers down without switching them on. He stayed, though. That was how Ivo knew the day had been a hard one.
They ate. Mara tried the onions first.
“They have an accent,” Ivo told her.
“Which region?”
“The bottom of the tray.”
She laughed in the middle of swallowing and reached for water. It was a new glass, thick and amber. He hadn't chosen it. Their household had kept acquiring things in her absence; he saw each one tonight as an item of evidence he had never meant to produce.
Someone asked Suri what she had found in Kestrel. She pointed her spoon at Ivo. “Tomorrow. Nobody gets a certificate because he looks optimistic.”
“I look like this all the time.”
“Then we're all in serious danger.”
Mara was smiling. He reached to give her more onions, then saw she still had plenty.
Alma discussed a hammock she intended to make. She had spent a lifetime making chairs kinder to people; now she was curious about sleeping when no one could sit down. Her sister had sent a picture of a room on Earth, with flowers on the quilt and a window overlooking a lane.
“It looks lovely,” Mara said when Alma showed her.
“It is lovely. She is lovely. She would be very hurt if I said I'd rather make a room than be given one.”
“Have you said it?”
“Only that I was thinking. I keep her picture open while I sew. I haven't found a way to tell her and leave her room to be hurt.”
Ivo watched Mara give that her full attention. She asked Alma to show her the view from her sister's window.
Nessa got up for more food before her own bowl was empty. Three people immediately asked her for something. She took the empty dishes from them.
“Sit down,” Ivo said.
“I will.”
“You say that a lot.”
“So do you.”
He went after her and took half the dishes. In the kitchen she leaned against the counter, eyes closed. Her mouth held the ghost of a smile she'd been using all evening.
“There's enough,” he said. “They'll survive if you stop moving.”
“I'm aware.”
“Then why—”
“Because somebody will do it badly and then I will have to watch.”
He laughed, and she opened her eyes without laughing back.
He brought the dishes inside and returned to the table with a bowl Nessa had put into his hands. His gift for cooking included accepting other people's finished work.
Later the children performed their curtain play. It concerned a stolen slipper and an unexpectedly polite monster. Ivo pulled his knees up to give them a longer stage beneath the table. Mara slid her chair around beside his. The play ended when its monster wanted dessert.
“Yours?” she asked, indicating the absurd stage.
“No. Better students.”
Her shoulder touched his. It stayed there.
He could have spent the rest of the evening pretending that was enough. Instead he said, “I thought you'd come back after the first six months.”
She looked at the cloth curtain, which still moved although the actors were gone.
“So did I.”
“You never said you'd stopped thinking that.”
“I kept trying to say why I liked it there.”
“You liked the contract.”
“Among other things.”
He waited.
“There's a market near where I live. On Thursdays. A woman sells plums so ripe you have to eat them standing beside her stall.”
“Plums?”
“No, Ivo. That isn't an argument. It's something I liked.”
He looked down at their two feet beside the table rail.
“And rain,” she said. “And being able to walk into a room without checking what's making that noise.”
“I could help more.”
“I know.”
It was not a dismissal. Somehow it left him with less to offer.
The fern leaves stirred above them. He took a bead of water from one with his fingertip and showed it to her, a foolish little act that had delighted her years before. She touched his finger. The drop broke between them.
“We get weather,” he said, but it was only a joke, and she let it be one.
When she left for the ship, he walked her as far as the upper stair. She turned at the handrail.
“I had a good evening,” she said.
He kissed her, quickly enough that she could refuse the second kiss. She didn't.
He watched her climb until the light changed around her. Then he went back to a table that needed clearing, where Dev had finally put on music and Nessa was asleep in her chair.