Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
For dinner in March, Sophie wore the red dress she had bought for the lake. It had hung in the wardrobe for months with its tag caught around the hanger, and she cut it free with the kitchen scissors. She put on the earrings Jesse had given her, tried another pair, and went back to his.
The museum had extended the trial through April, after the sponsor agreed to cover another block of buses. Sophie still wanted the room through the end of the school year, but she’d left that proposal at work tonight. She put her phone in her bag without opening the director’s latest email.
Jesse’s greeting faded when he saw the dress. He let her pull him through the doorway, then turned her slowly beneath the light before putting his hands on her waist.
“For the lake,” she said. “I decided it could leave the house.”
“I’m glad.” He held her coat while she put her arms in. “Very glad.”
At the restaurant they ordered too much. Sophie was hungry, and Jesse kept remembering things she liked from the last time they had been there, years before. She let him persuade her to share a starter, then stole the last piece while he was talking.
He caught her wrist lightly. “I saw that,” he said. He kissed her fingers before letting go.
Sophie looked at him across the candle and began thinking about taking him home. He’d arrived without an overnight bag, and she would have to lend him a toothbrush. She was deciding how to ask when his phone rang.
Hank’s name appeared. Jesse looked at it, frowned, and answered with an apology to Sophie that became irrelevant when she saw his expression change.
“Where are you?” he asked. He sat straighter. “Did she hit her head?”
Sophie put down her fork. She could hear Hank’s voice without making out the words, and watched Jesse ask about a wrist, a step stool, whether Lorraine had been able to stand. She glanced at the time before she could stop herself.
“She fell,” Jesse said after ending the call. “Dad’s taking her to the emergency room. Her wrist looks bad.”
Sophie put her napkin on the table. “Go,” she said when Jesse reached for his coat. “Call me when you know something.”
He turned his hand beneath hers and held it. “I’ll take a cab,” he said. “You take the truck. I’ll get it tomorrow.”
The server appeared with their main courses and stopped beside the table. Sophie moved Jesse’s water glass out of the way so he could set down the plates.
“All right.” She took his keys. “I’ll probably go home after dinner.”
He kissed her and spoke to the server before leaving.
Sophie asked for Jesse’s dinner to be boxed, then ate her own while a family at the next table lit candles on a birthday cake.
She watched the youngest child blow them out before the man in the paper hat could reach them, and laughed with the mother when he demanded they be lit again.
Jesse called after she reached home. Lorraine’s wrist was broken, they were waiting for treatment, and Hank had gone to find a vending machine because he hadn’t eaten. Sophie put the phone on speaker while she made room in the refrigerator for the boxed dinner.
“Have you had anything?” She shut the refrigerator before the carton could slide out.
“I’ll get something,” he said. A voice called in the background, and he answered briefly before returning to her. “Did you eat?”
“Yes. I brought yours home.” She looked down at the dress beneath her open coat.
He thanked her, then asked her to wait while someone spoke to him. She stood by the refrigerator until he came back and told her they were moving Lorraine to another room.
She took off the dress and hung it over a chair instead of hiding it in the wardrobe. At ten she read his message that Lorraine was being discharged, that Hank would stay with her, and that he was collecting a prescription. She answered that she was going to bed and would speak to him tomorrow.
He did not arrive at her house that night. Sophie woke once and checked the time, then felt foolish for listening for the truck when she had it parked outside herself. In the morning she made coffee and sent Jesse a message asking whether he wanted his cold dinner for breakfast.
He came at ten with a bag from the bakery. His hair was still damp from a shower, and he looked as though he had slept badly, but he smiled when she opened the door.
“She wanted me to stay,” he said after they sat down. He unfolded the paper bag. “Dad was already there. She kept asking anyway.”
“Did you get any sleep?” His eyes were red-rimmed in the daylight.
“A few hours.” He broke the loaf apart and handed her a piece. “I nearly came here. Forgot you’d gone to bed until I was halfway down the street.”
“You could’ve rung.” Sophie reached for the coffee and poured some into his cup before her own. He took it with both hands, warming them against the sides.
Sophie reached across the table and took his hand. He held hers, thumb moving over her knuckles, and she looked at him until his expression changed from relief to something warmer.
Then his phone rang. Lorraine’s name appeared, and he stared at it for a moment before answering.
“How’s the wrist?” He kept Sophie’s hand in his.
Sophie could hear Lorraine faintly, asking where he was. Jesse told her, and the voice rose enough for Sophie to catch her own name before he lowered the volume.
“Dad’s there,” he said. He listened again. “I bought the groceries last night. They’re in the fridge.”
Sophie let go to reach for the jam. Jesse listened while she tried the lid, then took the jar from her and opened it one-handed.
“I’m having breakfast,” he told Lorraine. He put the jar down between their plates. “I was there until eleven. Dad’s still there.”
He listened long enough for Sophie to spread jam on her bread. When he answered, his voice had lost its softness.
“Don’t start on her.” Jesse pushed his chair back. “I’ve asked about your wrist. If there’s something you need, tell me.”
He waited, then said he’d speak to Hank later and ended the call. Sophie kept eating while he stood beside his chair, staring at the blank screen.
He sat again and pushed his plate away. Sophie left hers where it was.
“The bread’s going stale while we sit here,” she said. “Have some. You can be in a foul mood and eat.”
He gave a short, surprised laugh. Then he rubbed both hands over his face and leaned back in the chair.
“Dad’s cut her toast up,” Jesse said. He reached for the loaf and broke off another piece. “She’ll be wanting it buttered on both sides by lunch.”
Sophie smiled before he did. “Tell me about the trumpet,” she said, giving him the last of the coffee. “I’d rather hear about that.”
He laughed properly this time. He told her the neighbor had attempted a new song at half past seven, and she let him complain until the tightness left his shoulders. They spent the rest of the morning on the sofa with his feet beside hers, their ruined dinner still in the refrigerator.
Before he left, he took her face in both hands and kissed her. Sophie held the back of his shirt, keeping him close after the kiss ended, then asked whether he could come on Wednesday. She hadn’t checked her calendar first.
On Monday Sophie met Lorraine in the pharmacy. She’d gone in for shampoo and something for the split skin beside her thumbnail, and Lorraine was standing in front of the bandages with a shopping basket hooked over her good arm.
For a second Sophie considered turning down the next aisle. Lorraine saw her before she moved, looked at the shampoo in her hand, and said hello with the strained politeness of someone meeting a former colleague she hadn’t liked.
“How’s your wrist?” Sophie asked. The white cast stopped below Lorraine’s swollen fingers, bare of their usual rings.
“It hurts.” Lorraine tried to pull a box from the shelf and knocked two more onto the floor. “They tell you what to do, then you get home and can’t open anything.”
Sophie picked up the boxes, gave Lorraine the one she wanted, and put the others back.
“Thank you,” Lorraine said. She dropped the box into her basket. “Hank’s in the car. He thinks it’s too warm in here.”
Through the window, Sophie could see Hank looking down at something in his lap.
“I’ve got a cupboard full of everything except what I need,” Lorraine said. She shifted the basket on her arm. “I told him where to find the old sling. He brought me Christmas ribbon.”
Sophie remembered the drawer under Lorraine’s stairs, where she had once looked for a needle and found napkins from a party fifteen years earlier. Lorraine had stood beside her telling her to look underneath them, both women laughing when another packet appeared.
Lorraine picked up a bottle from the shelf beside her and tried to turn it far enough to read the back. Sophie waited, expecting to be asked to do that too, but Lorraine tucked the basket against her hip and managed it herself.
“You used to ring me,” she said. She was still reading the bottle. “When you needed to know how to get something out of a tablecloth, or which butcher had the lamb. You rang me before you rang your own mother sometimes.”
“Sometimes.” Sophie remembered Lorraine staying on the phone while she rescued the sauce for Jesse’s birthday dinner. “You knew where to get things.”
“I liked it.” Lorraine put the bottle back, facing the wrong way. “You never thought I was interfering then.”
“I asked you then.” Sophie moved aside for a woman reaching between two shelves.
Lorraine watched the woman go. She looked older with her coat half fastened and her handbag strap slipping down the shoulder above the cast. Sophie had the sudden, unwelcome thought that Jesse had probably fastened that coat for her in the hospital.
“He rang me every morning,” Lorraine said. She stopped, then tried again. “On his way to work. Just five minutes. I used to have the radio off so I wouldn’t miss him.”