Evan's car had a wooden strip on the back seat and an empty paper bag folded into the space beside the handbrake. Before Claire got in he moved a jacket from the passenger seat, then looked at the place where it had been as though other evidence of his life might remain.
“It's fine,” she said.
“People say that before the splinter.”
She sat down, carefully. He drove without asking for directions, and when she asked whether he knew the house he said Sam had once shown it to him, passing.
“Before she married him?”
“Before. Not long before.”
The houses grew farther apart on the road toward the river. Claire remembered this stretch from collecting Vivian's final information sheet, the kitchen window with a row of little plant pots, a delivery lorry blocking half the drive. Graham had come out and carried her sample album inside as though it were luggage, although it weighed less than the bag she brought everywhere. She had thought him attentive.
Evan slowed near the house. The hedge at the front was clipped low enough to show the windows, and the driveway had room for three cars without any of them blocking another. Everything looked designed to make life easy.
“Perhaps I should have waited,” he said.
“For what?”
“A reply.”
Claire looked at the house. A window upstairs was open. She had come out wanting to alter what might happen to her, and was sitting beside a man with something more immediate to want. She couldn't send him back into waiting because she disliked a photograph.
“We can ask,” she said. “She can say no.”
Graham answered the door in a clean white T-shirt. He looked pleased to see Claire, then curious at Evan's presence.
“The preview was wonderful,” he said. “Viv's been showing everyone. You've made my mother look almost approachable.”
“She was very nice to me.”
“You're not her son.”
He laughed and stood aside before Claire had explained why they were there. Evan didn't move.
“I'm Sam Hart's brother.”
Graham's expression changed, but not to anything Claire could name. He brought his hand down from the edge of the door.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “A terrible thing.”
“I'd like to speak to Vivian.”
“She's upstairs. Having a rest.”
“Could you ask her?”
“Come in first. You don't need to stand on the step.”
Claire entered. Evan followed, less willingly. The hall opened into the kitchen she remembered, bright wood and white surfaces with a blue bowl of lemons making a small, deliberate mess. A narrow table by the window was covered with Vivian's sketches. Graham moved two pages to make a place for the glass of water he offered Evan.
“She's been working this morning. Said she needed something to do with her hands.”
Claire looked at a sketch of a loose coat with flowers running along one sleeve. Vivian had marked the other sleeve with a question mark. It was the kind of drawing that made Claire want the garment before it existed.
“Is this the line?” she asked.
“Some of it. We were going to see suppliers next week.” Graham's voice softened. “Everything feels wrong now.”
“Did she see Sam on Sunday?” Evan asked.
Graham looked up from the sketches. “I don't know.”
“Could you ask her to come down?”
“Of course.”
He left the room. Claire heard his voice at the foot of the stairs, low enough that the words didn't reach her. Then a woman answered. There was a pause, and footsteps.
Vivian came down wearing the same pale shirt Claire had seen in the roadside photograph. The fact struck her so hard that she missed what Graham said on his return.
“Claire.” Vivian stopped in the kitchen doorway. “I didn't know you were coming.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Those pictures—thank you.”
She spoke warmly but kept looking at Evan. He had risen from the chair Graham had offered.
“I know,” she said to him before he spoke. “I am so sorry.”
He nodded once. “I wanted to ask you something.”
Graham pulled a chair out for Vivian, and she sat. He stood behind it, his fingers resting briefly on her shoulder before moving away.
“Would anyone like coffee?”
“Not me,” Evan said.
“Claire?”
“No, thank you.”
“Viv?”
She shook her head.
The offer had filled the room while everyone refused it. Graham remained beside the chair.
“When did you last see Sam?” Evan asked.
Vivian looked at the table, where the sleeve with the question mark lay under her hand.
“At the wedding.”
Claire felt the man in the road enter the kitchen, invisibly, taking up more space than any of them.
“He worked there,” Vivian added.
“Did you know he was going to?”
“No.”
“Did you speak to him?”
Graham said, “We saw nearly a hundred people that day.”
Evan kept his eyes on Vivian. “I'm asking her.”
“I know who you're asking.”
“A little,” Vivian said. “We spoke a little.”
“About what?”
“Not much.”
She flattened the corner of the paper, then folded it back. Claire wanted to move Graham's hand from the back of her chair, even though it wasn't touching her. She wanted to sit beside Vivian and let the conversation become one between women, easier.
“Evan's looking for the last things he did,” she said. “I've found some pictures.”
Vivian looked at her. “Of Sam?”
“Ordinary pictures. Working.”
She shouldn't have said ordinary. It was a word explaining a distinction Vivian had no reason to know.
“What did he say?” Evan asked.
“He wished me well.”
Graham made a small sound, almost a laugh. Vivian looked toward him and then away.
“And after that?”
“I don't—”
“Did you see him the next day?”
The kitchen went quiet. Beyond the open window something tapped against a plant pot, a leaf or a piece of the hanging blind.
Vivian opened her mouth. Graham said, “That's enough.”
“She hasn't answered.”
“You can see she's upset.”
“So am I.”
“I'm sure you are. This isn't the way.”
Evan placed his hands on the table. Not hard, but Graham looked at them.
“My brother was found on a road behind the place he worked at her wedding. I'm not asking how she feels about him. I'm asking if she saw him.”
“Don't come into my house and raise your voice at my wife.”
“I wasn't raising it.”
He was now. Claire stood, and the movement made Vivian look at her as though she might have an answer they had all forgotten.
“We should go,” Claire said. “Vivian, if you'd like to speak another time—”
“I'd like you to leave her alone,” Graham said.
“That's not what I asked.”
Vivian drew her chair back. Graham moved to let her rise. For a moment Claire thought she would leave the room, but she remained at the table, one hand on the sleeve sketch.
“I can't do this now,” she said to Evan.
He stared at her. The anger in his face lost some of its direction. Claire saw the grief beneath it, unprovided for, and wished she had not brought him here.
“All right,” he said.
Graham was already at the kitchen entrance. “I'll see you out.”
They went into the hall. Claire waited for Evan to pass her, and Graham opened the front door. The afternoon was bright. Someone was trimming another hedge in another garden, the sound ordinary and persistent.
On the step Evan turned back.
“You knew about them?” he asked Graham.
“Yes.”
“Then you know why I need to ask.”
“What I know is that Sam didn't understand when something was over.”
Claire saw Evan's face close.
“What does that mean?”
“It means leave it there.”
“Say it.”
Graham stepped out of the doorway. “Don't tell me what to do on my own doorstep.”
Evan didn't move back. “What did my brother do?”
“Enough.”
Graham put a hand against Evan's chest. Evan caught his wrist and took it away. It was a quick movement, more refusal than force, but Graham's other hand came up and struck him in the face.
The sound was small, smaller than Claire expected. Evan stumbled sideways into the low wall, and when he turned back there was blood above his eyebrow.
“Graham,” Vivian said from inside.
Graham stood with his fist still half-raised. He looked at Claire, then at Evan, as though trying to identify the person who had made this happen.
Evan pushed away from the wall.
Claire stepped between them without planning to. She didn't spread her arms or say anything brave. She put a hand against Evan's shirt and said, “Come with me.”
He looked past her. She could feel his breathing through the cloth.
“Come with me,” she said again.
Blood ran toward the side of his nose. He blinked and moved his head. Behind Claire, Graham said something about touching him first. She didn't turn to argue. She took Evan's arm and went down the path.
He came with her.
In the car she handed him tissues from the glove compartment. He held them above his eye and let her take the keys.
“You should have someone look at that,” she said.
“I will.”
“Now.”
“I need a minute.”
She looked back at the house. Vivian stood in the doorway with Graham beside her, the pale shirt lit by the sun. The coat drawing would still be on the kitchen table. Claire hated that she could remember it so vividly.
She drove to her house because it was close and she had clean cloths, water, somewhere to sit. She told herself this was not the same as taking him upstairs. Nothing made her do that.
When she parked, he removed the tissues and looked at them, disgusted.
“Sorry about your Sunday,” he said.
“It wasn't doing much.”
He almost smiled. She wished he wouldn't. The smallest kindness now seemed to open another door she had meant to keep shut.