Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
The relatives kept calling for two days after the dinner. Jesse answered the ones who would listen and sent a single written correction to the rest. When Lorraine posted a photograph of the uneaten food, he replied beneath it himself and asked people to stop forwarding things to Sophie.
Bethany met Sophie for lunch on Wednesday. They spent the first ten minutes discussing the cafe’s changed menu, both avoiding the empty place on the table where Bethany usually put her phone to show Sophie pictures of her son.
Sophie put down the menu. “I’m sorry I argued about the picture. You shouldn’t have had to ask twice.”
“I wasn’t asking you to take your post down,” Bethany said.
“I know. I was angry with everyone else and took it out on you.”
Bethany looked at her, then nodded. “Thank you.” She put her phone on the table.
“I took him to the toddler class,” Bethany said eventually. She told Sophie about the little indoor slide and how he’d refused to get off it until every other child had left.
Sophie reached for her bag, remembering the leaflet she’d meant to send. “There’s one at the community center too,” she said. “Lorraine could take him on Fridays.”
Bethany watched her for a moment before asking about the times.
Sophie found the leaflet, smoothed its bent corner, and wrote the name of the woman who ran the group on the back.
They split the bill when it came, and Bethany showed her a photograph of the boy in his father’s shoes as they waited for their coats.
Jesse came to collect the last of his tools on Friday. Sophie had agreed to leave the garage open, but rain drove sideways beneath the door while he loaded the truck, and she couldn’t stand inside watching his clothes darken any longer. She opened the back door and called him in.
He wiped his boots on the mat three times. Sophie handed him a towel, then watched him dry his hair with the same brisk movement she had seen after every shower for years.
“There’s coffee,” she said. She turned toward the kitchen before she could offer him anything else.
He followed her into the kitchen and sat opposite the mug she’d put out. Sophie told him the museum had agreed to six afternoons, and he asked when they started with the unguarded interest that had made her tell him everything in the first place.
She found herself describing the storage problem. Jesse remembered a locked room behind the loading bay, and she wrote it down before asking what had happened to the two men who’d helped him fit out the old workshop.
“One’s coming Friday,” he said. He dried a drip from his hair with the end of the towel. “The other’s still deciding whether I insulted him.”
Sophie nearly asked which was which. Jesse drank his coffee and went on before she could.
He put down the mug. “There’s something I did before that dinner,” he said. “I called the venue. About March.”
“What about March?”
“They have a Friday. I thought we could have dinner there. Get some pictures. Your mom, Kelly, Haley if you wanted.”
Sophie set her coffee down. The venue brochure was still in a kitchen drawer, beneath takeout menus and instructions for a toaster they’d returned.
“You booked it?” Sophie asked. Jesse nodded, watching her across the table.
“I held it,” he said. He rubbed his thumb over the handle. “There’s a deposit. I didn’t invite anyone.”
“You told Kelly?” Sophie’s voice sharpened.
“No,” he said. “I’m telling you.”
Sophie went to the sink. The dark window reflected him at her table.
“I thought by March—” He stopped as she turned. “It was a nice place. You loved the garden.”
“I loved the bedroom.” She continued before she lost her nerve. “I wanted to be in there with you. I barely remember eating dinner.”
“I wanted my wedding night,” she said. Her voice was low enough that he bent toward her. “I wanted you to finish with those buttons and put your hands on me.”
Jesse was looking at her mouth. Sophie remembered waiting for that look all evening, waiting even after they’d begun arguing in the hotel room.
“I thought if I stopped arguing, you’d kiss me,” she said. “You were right there. I kept waiting.”
“I bought something to wear,” she said. “It was in the bathroom. I left it in the bag because you looked like touching me would mean you’d let me win.”
“I wanted you,” he said. His voice was rough. “Sophie, I wanted you.”
“Then why did I have to put my hand in your hair and make you feel better?” she asked. Tears came before she finished. “I was sitting there in my wedding dress, and you were upset with me.”
“I wanted you to say you were sorry.” Jesse spoke over her last words, then pushed his chair back without standing. “About the wine. I kept thinking you were glad Mom was gone.”
“I was sorry,” Sophie said. She wiped beneath her eye with the side of her hand. “I went to sleep sorry.”
He pushed the tissue box toward her. “I should’ve held you,” he said. His mouth worked around the next words before he managed them. “I kept waiting for you to say it first.”
Sophie took a tissue and waited for the burning in her throat to ease. He reached across the table, and she let him touch her fingers without taking his hand.
“Cancel it.” She pulled her hand free to use the tissue. “I can’t have March sitting there waiting for me.”
He said he would. Sophie took their cups to the sink, leaving him at the table with the towel she’d given him for his hair.
He came to stand beside her while she rinsed them. They could see one another in the dark window, but he said nothing more about March. She held the back door while he carried the last of his tools to the truck.
He lost the deposit. He told her it had come from his own account and sent the cancellation confirmation that evening.
The wedding check was still uncashed. After a brief call with Jesse, Sophie mailed it back with a note signed by both of them, then put Lorraine’s next message away without answering.
Christmas morning came bright and cold. Sophie put on the earrings he had given her the year before, took them off, then put them on again because she liked them and was tired of making decisions around his absence.
Kelly arrived carrying too much food and asked no questions when she saw the earrings.
Jesse sent a message at ten with a photograph of the paper tree left in the studio by the previous tenant.
One branch sagged beneath a single ornament, and Sophie laughed before looking for a photograph to send him.
She chose the blue jug with its holly, leaving the rest of the empty kitchen out of the frame.
He did not go to Lorraine’s. Sophie learned that from Hank, who called after lunch to say he was bringing a package Lorraine had left in his car. When Sophie said she didn’t want it, he paused, then said he would take it back.
“You can come without it,” Sophie said. The offer surprised her, and she waited to see whether she regretted it.
Hank said he would come another day. Sophie heard Lorraine calling from somewhere behind him, then heard him tell her he was speaking to Sophie. He ended the call himself, and Sophie put another log on the fire before returning to her family.
On Thursday, Denise called to ask whether Sophie had Jesse’s old office photographs at the house.
Most were in the box he’d collected, but there was one of him with his first apprentice on the shelf in the study.
Sophie offered to leave it on the porch.
Denise said she’d be at the new unit until six, and Sophie found herself putting the frame into a bag instead.
It was dark when she turned into the freight yard. A van stood with both back doors open, and Jesse was carrying a desk toward a narrow side entrance with another man. She waited in the car while they turned it twice and finally set it down to remove the legs.
Denise came out with a box of files and saw her. She waved Sophie toward the lit doorway, where a little fan heater stood beneath the old upholstery shop’s counter.
“Mind the step,” Denise said. She moved a cable with her shoe. “He’s putting a strip on it tomorrow. I’ve nearly broken my neck twice.”
Sophie handed over the photograph. Denise unwrapped it and set it on the counter beside a kettle with its lid missing.
“Is it awful?” Sophie looked at the boxes covering half the floor. “Moving, I mean.”
“It’s moving.” Denise found a spoon in a drawer and stirred her tea with the handle. “He gave me the extra hours. I told him I wasn’t sorting eight years of invoices on goodwill.”
Sophie looked toward the door. The men had brought the desk inside and left it beside the counter; Jesse had seen her through the window and was waiting while the other man closed the van.
He came in after the man drove away. His work shirt was dusty, and he stopped beside the counter without offering to take her coat.
“Thanks.” His gaze went to the photograph. “I wondered where that was.”
“Denise called. She said you’d be here.” Sophie folded the empty bag.
Denise rinsed her spoon and announced that she was leaving. She told Jesse which files still needed locking away, gave Sophie a quick goodbye, and went out carrying her coat over the hand with the tea in it.
Jesse offered Sophie a chair. She stayed beside the counter.
“Is this why you couldn’t tell me where you were on Wednesday?” she asked. She remembered an email about collecting a ladder, his reply saying he would come later.
“The landlord was here.” Jesse put a hand on the back of the chair. “Then the accountant. I nearly backed out when I saw the heating bill.”
“But you didn’t. Have you told the men?”
“They helped me choose it,” he said. He showed her the space beyond the counter. “The vans fit round the back. There’s room for the second one if we get it.”
Most of the familiar equipment was there already. Sophie recognized the cabinet beside the door, the drawers Jesse had labeled himself when the new apprentice kept putting things in the wrong place. It looked smaller without the shelves built around it.