Chapter 21 #2
Sophie left the bins beside the gate and came back slowly. He looked up when she entered, then returned his attention to the paper.
“Because it was a favor before.” Jesse waited, listening with the phone pressed hard against his ear. “No. I can’t do that now.”
Sophie went to the sink. She could hear enough of the man’s reply to recognize Lorraine’s name, then her own, and she turned the tap off before she’d rinsed the dirt from her hands.
“You can take it somewhere else,” Jesse said. His voice had become flat. “If you want me doing it, you can stop talking about my wife.”
The answer was loud enough to make him pull the phone away. He brought it back to say goodbye, then set it on the table and crossed a line through the page in front of him.
Sophie washed her hands. He began gathering the papers, keeping his face turned away as he put them into a folder.
“You can tell me,” she said, drying her hands. “I heard my name.”
“He thinks he’s still entitled to free work.” Jesse pushed the folder into his bag. “He can hire somebody who wants to hear him talk.”
Sophie waited for the rest. He went to the refrigerator and stood looking inside without taking anything.
“I heard Lorraine’s name too.”
“Then you heard enough.” He closed it without taking anything. “I’m trying to get some dinner made. I don’t want another hour of what my cousin thinks about my marriage.”
Sophie put the towel down. She’d come into the kitchen expecting to be angry with the caller, and now she was angry with Jesse for shutting her out of something that concerned her.
“I didn’t ask you to call him.” Sophie took out the potatoes and began scrubbing them.
“He called me. I answered. It’s finished.” Jesse reached past her for the small knife.
They made dinner with the radio on. Sophie asked him to turn it down because she couldn’t hear the timer, and he switched it off altogether.
After they ate, he took the folder back out and moved a job on the calendar. Sophie watched him telephone another customer and offer the morning he’d been holding for his cousin, using the brisk, friendly voice he seemed unable to find for her tonight.
She went upstairs. In the bedroom she found the sweater she’d lent Kelly in the bag beside the wardrobe, and remembered how she’d treated him over a work shirt. She put the sweater away and left the bag where it was.
Jesse came up while she was brushing her teeth. He leaned against the bathroom door and waited until she rinsed before speaking.
“He said you’d cost me the building,” he said. “That was most of it. I told him I’d made the decision.”
“Is that what they all think?” she asked.
“Some of them. I’ve told them. I can’t make them stop saying it.”
She went to him and put her arms around his waist. He held her after a moment, carefully at first, then hard enough for her to turn her face into his shoulder.
“You were back by four,” she said. “Yesterday. I was still being horrible when you came home. I’m sorry. You’d done what you said you would.”
He let out a breath against her hair. “Three forty,” he said. “I know because I sat in the truck and checked before I came in.”
She put her cheek back against his shoulder. They stood in the doorway until she asked whether he wanted to come downstairs and watch something, and he said yes without letting go yet.
The next week she accepted an invitation to visit another museum’s school program for three days. She told Jesse over dinner, already preparing to defend the timing, and he asked whether the train left early enough that she would need a ride.
“You don’t mind?” She disliked how tentative she sounded.
“I’d rather you were here,” he said. He reached for the salt. “But you should go. Bring back whatever makes your director give you the room.”
She went. On the first morning she sat at the back of a room while a woman with paint on her shoes explained how they’d persuaded three schools to share a bus. Sophie had brought questions about materials, but she filled two pages before they reached the supplies cupboard.
At lunch she called Jesse from a bench outside. He answered over the sound of a drill, then asked her to wait while he went somewhere quieter.
“They’ve got somewhere to leave everything overnight,” she said. “They don’t have to clear the tables. The children can come back and finish.” She had been thinking about the half-painted models all through the morning talk.
“How big is it?” he asked. Sophie described the room, including the cupboard she’d opened while nobody was looking. He laughed when she admitted that, and she told him she’d asked permission afterward.
He wanted to know whether she had company for lunch.
She said some of the others had gone to the cafe and she was going to join them, although she’d been considering spending the break alone with her notes.
They were still at the counter when she caught up, and one of the women made room for her in the line.
That evening she stayed for a second glass of wine.
The woman beside her had been running a school program for eleven years and still couldn’t get the heating repaired; another had brought photographs of a disastrous clay session and passed her phone around the table.
Sophie showed them the blue chair, which somebody had caught in the background of a picture of Jesse in the doorway.