Hannah rang while Nora was on the way home from the interview. She was at a print shop, waiting for proofs which should have been ready that morning, and asked whether Nora could meet her nearby.
“I can't leave,” she said. “They'll tell me they're done and shut the place.”
Nora changed the car's destination. She had been preparing to sit in the apartment and go over the interview until she found a version in which she hadn't made a mistake. The invitation gave her somewhere else to be.
Hannah stood outside the shop smoking a cigarette she barely seemed to want. There was a tube tucked beneath one arm. She took one last draw, made a face and dropped it into the metal bin by the door.
“Sorry,” she said. “I don't usually.”
“You don't have to apologize.”
“I bought twenty. It's an absurd number of cigarettes to own if you want one.”
Nora smiled. Hannah didn't.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Nora nearly answered with the account she gave friends who wanted to know about her arm. Hannah was watching her face, though, and the easy reply wouldn't fit it.
“A difficult day.”
“The police?”
“Yes.”
“They told me about the blood.”
Nora looked toward the shop window, where a large sign offered the cheerful possibility of printing anything.
“At the house.”
“They rang this afternoon. They said the sample they'd compared wasn't Dad's. They didn't tell me whose. There are other things they're still checking.” Hannah took a breath. “I keep hearing blood and forgetting the rest.”
Hannah tucked the tube more securely beneath her arm.
“I'm sorry. You didn't do it. I'm not asking you to fix it.”
Nora's throat tightened. She could tell her the blood was hers. It would comfort Hannah for a moment, then invite questions about a place Nora had denied visiting and a man she had robbed.
“Come and sit down,” she said.
There was a cafe two doors away. Hannah chose a table where she could see anyone leaving the print shop. She put the tube against the chair, opened her laptop and immediately closed it again.
“I keep doing that.”
“What?”
“Trying to work. It's not work. It's opening the thing work lives in and hoping it catches.”
Nora understood more clearly than she wanted. She bought them coffee. Hannah thanked her, then brought up the message from her father.
Away a few days. Don't fuss.
It was plain. Nora had heard the account already, but seeing the words made Dominic more absent. There should have been a voice behind them, somebody irritated by a daughter who might make demands.
“What's wrong with it?” Nora asked.
“I don't know.”
“You said there was something.”
“Not a secret code. Just him.”
Hannah set the phone beside her coffee.
“He asked me for things before he went. Work things. I took him some prints. He had a man he wanted to show them to. There was going to be a shop, or a business, or some wonderful opportunity which would make me see he was right.”
“Right about what?”
“That I should stop doing small jobs and do whatever he said.”
Nora heard Cal's voice telling her to name what she needed.
“Did you want the opportunity?”
Hannah looked embarrassed.
“Of course I did. I wanted to be annoying about it and then have it happen. I made the prints nicer than they needed to be. I bought a folio because I didn't want him handing them over in the envelope from the printer.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. He went away. He didn't say where the man was, whether they'd met, when he wanted the rest. Just don't fuss. It doesn't sound like him shutting up about a thing he thinks I should do.”
“People get distracted.”
“I know.”
“He might be meeting someone else.”
“I know that, too.”
Hannah picked up her coffee, took a sip and set it down harder than she intended.
“You keep telling me things I know.”
Nora looked at her. The daughter was not asking for a theory which might allow her to stop feeling afraid. She wanted the people who'd known her father to help find the actual man.
“I'm sorry.”
Hannah rubbed a hand across her face.
“No. I'm being horrible. You've got something wrong with your arm and you've come here.”
“You're not being horrible.”
They sat quietly. In the print-shop doorway a man appeared with a parcel, and Hannah half rose, then sat when she saw it wasn't hers.
“Can I ask you something practical?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Your brother's worked for him, hasn't he?”
“On my jobs.”
“Could he have picked anything up? Dad's things, things he wanted moved? The police asked who'd been at the house. I said I didn't know.”
Nora watched a drop of coffee travel down the side of her cup.
“I'll ask.”
“I'd like the folio back. If someone has it. Not because I think he won't come back. Because I need it, and I can't keep pretending I'm not supposed to need anything while I wait.”
“You can need it.”
“Can you give Cal my number?”
Nora nodded before thinking of the next question.
“Why do you want to speak to him?”
Hannah looked at her as though the answer should have been obvious.
“Because he might know something you don't.”
He did know more about what had happened after the garden room. Nora had been under other people's care while he handled things. That wasn't an accusation. It was a fact she'd relied on.
“I'll ask him to ring,” she said.
Hannah's phone vibrated. The proofs were ready, at last. She opened the laptop and checked an email, then groaned.
“They've changed the address.”
“For delivery?”
“On the menu. They gave me the address, approved the address and now apparently remember there's a number in it.”
She stood, picked up the tube and shoved the laptop into her bag. Nora saw how much of her day had been spent trying to keep an ordinary job from collapsing around the larger fear.
“If I hear anything, I'll tell you,” Nora said.
“Please don't just tell me not to worry.”
Nora agreed. Hannah went back to the print shop, where she immediately began pointing to something on a proof. She was good at it. Nora could tell from the way she spoke to the man behind the counter, firm about what she had supplied and careful not to blame him for something he'd been asked to do.
In the cafe, Nora sent Cal Hannah's number.
She wants to know if you collected anything of Dominic's. A folio, prints. Can you ring her?
He replied I'll sort it.
Nora watched the answer. She could ask what sort meant, make him name the actual thing he intended to do. Instead she put the phone away and went home, carrying Hannah's account of a father who could be kind in ways which made kindness difficult to refuse.