Chapter 20 #2
Sophie remembered the calls Jesse made from the truck outside their house before she came down with his forgotten lunch.
She had assumed most were to customers; some probably had been, but she could hear his mother’s voice now, asking if he was warm enough, telling him who had called the night before.
“I’ve got to go back to work,” Sophie said. “I’m glad you’re home from the hospital.”
Lorraine nodded. She stayed by the shelf as Sophie walked toward the register, and when Sophie looked back she was trying to free the basket handle from the cuff of her coat.
Sophie paid and went outside. Hank lifted a hand when he saw her, but she crossed the road before he could lower the window. She had been courteous, she told herself on the way back to the museum; she didn’t owe anybody an afternoon in the pharmacy.
At her desk she opened a message from Jesse asking whether Wednesday was still good.
She started to tell him she’d seen his mother, then deleted the sentence and answered about dinner.
That evening she pictured Lorraine sitting beside the silent radio, and opened Jesse’s message again before she went to bed.
The following Wednesday, Sophie came out of the museum with a folded sample of flooring under her arm.
Jesse had stopped to look at the gallery’s damaged threshold on his way between jobs, and she found him beside his truck with Hank, who had parked so close to the back doors that neither could open them.
“I’ll take that,” Jesse said when he saw her. He reached for the sample and put it on the passenger seat. “Dad, move the car a bit.”
Hank stayed where he was. He wore a good coat over the shirt he usually wore at home, and one sleeve was caught inside the other, making the cuff stick out.
“Did you call her?” he asked. He glanced at Sophie, then back at Jesse.
“About the wrist? Yesterday.”
“About us.” Hank took his keys from his pocket and held them without moving. “She won’t listen to me.”
Sophie stepped toward the museum doors. Jesse had the information he needed, and she could go back inside before either man asked her to help with whatever this was.
“Tell her I meant it,” Hank said behind her. “She thinks I’m just having a fit.”
“Then tell her again.” Jesse’s voice rose enough to stop Sophie on the step. “I don’t even know what you’ve said.”
Hank tugged at the trapped cuff, then abandoned it.
“I tried taking her away,” he said. “That place on the coast. You remember it.”
Sophie knew the place from photographs of Jesse as a child on a wide beach beside a hotel that had since been rebuilt.
“February,” Hank said. “Two nights. I thought if we got out of the house, away from all this—” He stopped as a delivery van turned into the yard, waiting until it had backed into a space before continuing.
“She spent the first night calling you,” he said. “Then Ruth. I went down for dinner on my own.”
Jesse folded his arms. “I remember the calls,” he said. “She said you went to the bar and left her.”
“I did go to the bar.” Hank shoved the keys into his coat. “After I sat upstairs for two hours. I’d booked the table. I told her three times.”
Sophie came down one step. Hank turned toward her, and she looked past him at the delivery driver waiting for someone to open the loading doors.
“I said I’d go with her to talk to someone,” Hank continued. “She said you’d been putting ideas in my head. You and Sophie.”
The crease between Jesse’s eyebrows had deepened.
“You need to tell her it was my idea,” Hank said. He stepped closer. “If she hears it from you?—”
“She can hear it from you.” Jesse pulled away from the truck. “I’m not calling her to explain what my father meant.”
“I asked you for one call,” Hank said. His face reddened, and he reached for his keys again. “You make it sound like I’ve asked you to move back in.”
“You’ll be out there with the car by the time I’ve got her on the phone,” Jesse said. “You’ve done it before.”
Hank said Jesse wasn’t being fair. He looked toward Sophie, but she had turned to the driver waiting by the loading doors.
Jesse rested his hand on the open truck door. Sophie went down the last step to let the delivery driver through, leaving the two men arguing behind her.
The teacher inside was holding the gallery door open with her shoulder. Sophie lifted a hand to show she’d seen her, then turned back to Jesse.
“I need to go in.” Sophie touched Jesse’s sleeve. “Can you send me the measurement?”
He nodded. Hank turned toward his car without saying goodbye.
Through the glass, Sophie saw him stop with his hand on the door. He said something to Jesse, who shook his head, and Hank stood a moment longer before getting in. He moved the car far enough to clear the truck, then stayed parked while Jesse drove away.
That evening Jesse told her Hank had asked him not to mention the conversation to Lorraine. Sophie sat on the stairs with the phone against her ear, listening to a silence neither seemed able to finish.
“We went three days without talking about her,” Jesse said finally. “Before today. It’s been nice. I feel like an asshole saying that.”
“He offered to go and talk to someone,” Sophie said. “Would she ever go?”
“I don’t know,” Jesse said. He let out a breath. “I’m tired, Soph. I keep wanting them to leave each other alone so I can stop hearing about it.”
“Are you coming on Friday?” she asked after a moment. “I need to know how much to buy.”
“Yes,” he said. His voice changed. “I’ll bring dinner. You’ve cooked the last two times.”
They argued mildly about what counted as cooking when one of those meals had come from a supermarket tray. When they ended the call, Sophie had agreed to his bringing food and he had agreed to stop buying the bread she liked least because it was on his way.
The director asked Sophie to move a late-April session for a private booking.
She kept the children’s date by arranging for the client to have lunch at a neighboring venue and return to the museum for the evening.
The compromise earned less than the director wanted and left Sophie finding money for transport and an extra cleaner; she spent most of Thursday calling people she would rather have avoided.
The teacher sent the next group’s names that afternoon. Sophie recognized several from the first visits, including the boy who’d made the house, and wrote back asking whether he’d finished the upper floor. The reply came at six: he had, and he’d made a garage too.
Jesse arrived while Sophie was still at the kitchen table comparing supply prices. He brought dinner, listened while she complained about the client, and opened the containers without asking why she’d left the figures where they usually ate.
“Is that the price for one or the whole box?” Sophie checked, then brought him a plate and sat down to eat before answering.
She told him about the boy’s garage while he opened the second container. He wanted to know whether it had room for the bus too, and she said she’d ask.
After dinner he helped her count the boxes she’d been storing beside the washing machine.
She found six packets of brushes she’d been about to order again, and he refused to let her hide them behind the detergent until he finished laughing.
She threw a clean towel at him, missed, and left it on the floor while she crossed the room to kiss him.