Chapter 10
CLAIRE
That December, I led the adult book group on my own for the first time. Twenty minutes before it began, I rearranged all twelve chairs.
A colleague took over moving the chairs while I set out books. My shifts had grown longer as my shoulder healed, though I still needed help reaching high shelves. I removed two places so the room wouldn’t look empty.
“What if two more people show up?” my colleague asked.
“I’ll be delighted to admit I misjudged things.”
She laughed and went to the front desk. While no one was looking, I checked the buttons on my shirt. Sure enough, the second one on my chest was in the wrong hole.
My phone lit up on the table. Ethan was reminding me that Nora needed an old shirt for art class today.
“Already in her backpack. The sleeves are tied up with rubber bands,” I replied.
He asked what time my group started. I told him 6:30 p.m., then added, “There’s a woman here who’s been sitting by the door without saying a word. I’m afraid I’ll be the only one asking questions tonight.”
Only after I sent it did I realize I’d turned a reply about Nora into a complaint. I silenced my phone and slid it under the sign-in sheet.
At 6:30 p.m., ten people sat around the table. I introduced myself, gripped the pen I’d had ready for three days and barely used, and asked what everyone thought of the ending.
The man in red-framed glasses cleared his throat.
For nine minutes, he traced dates and movements through the novel. Others began looking at me. The woman in the gray scarf kept her hands on her closed book.
I tried to interject. “That is an interesting point. Does anyone else?—”
“And the window.” He raised a finger. “That window is a major problem.”
The pen clip dug into my finger. I thought of the three pages of questions I’d printed that afternoon and suddenly couldn’t remember a single one.
During those years away from work, I’d sometimes thought I knew this job so well I could pick it right up again.
At that moment, I couldn’t even get ten people to take turns talking.
He turned to the page with the window. Following his finger, I noticed the pot of soup the cook had brought into the living room. I loosened my grip on the pen.
“Let’s leave the window alone for a moment,” I said. “If you were this family’s cook and knew there was a murderer in the house, would you stay to finish making dinner?”
“Depends how much they’re paying,” a woman said at once.
Laughter went around the table. The man in red-framed glasses laughed too. If the cook left, he said, the police would think he had something to hide.
“So you’d stay?” I asked him.
“At least until the police arrived.”
“All right, one person staying. What about everyone else? Let’s go around from this side. You can pass if you’d like.”
Someone wanted to collect their pay first. Someone else would take the biggest knife in the kitchen. When it was the turn of the woman in the gray scarf by the door, she shook her head. I was about to move on when she suddenly said, “I’d take the soup.”
Everyone looked at her. Her fingers retreated into her sleeves.
“It wasn’t for them. He said earlier that he was saving it for his daughter.”
I turned back a few pages and found the line. It was there, only half a sentence. I’d read it twice without remembering it.
“Would you like to read it to us?”
She took the book I offered and read the short passage. The man who’d been discussing dates sat forward and said he’d missed that too. She looked up at him, and her mouth finally relaxed a little.
“That’s why I think he wanted to go home all along. He just couldn’t leave,” she said.
Soon people were answering each other, bringing up their own families and arguing about the cook. I invited quieter readers to speak when there was a pause. My prepared questions lay untouched. I finally set down the pen that had been digging into my finger.
It was 7:30 p.m., and people still wanted to talk about the ending.
I announced the end, but the man in red glasses was still debating with the woman in the gray scarf, listening between replies. Reaching for the cups, I saw the time and my heart lurched.
I almost blurted out that I had to pick up Nora. When I checked my phone, the top message was from Ethan, sent fifteen minutes earlier. “Got her. She’s explaining why there are three shades of green on her shirt. Take your time.”
He’d originally been scheduled for a same-day round trip. He’d adjusted his return trip the day before instead of waiting until school pickup to sort out the scheduling conflict. I read the message, set down my bag, and sat again at the corner of the table.
“Go on. I’d like to hear the rest of your argument.”
The woman in the gray scarf pushed the book into the space between us. This time, she didn’t wait for me to call on her.
We talked for another twenty minutes. The dark window reflected our faces over the pages. My bag lay by my feet, and I could leave it there. No one was waiting for me to rush away.
As she was leaving, the woman in the gray scarf asked whether I’d be here next time.
“Yes,” I said, more quickly than I’d expected. “Next Wednesday again.”
She entered the time in her phone, then told me she’d rehearsed what she wanted to say over and over at home. Once she got here, she’d been afraid of remembering it wrong and wasting everyone’s time.
“I was scared tonight too,” I said. “I didn’t get through a single question I’d prepared.”
She glanced at the pages on the table, smiled, and slid the bottom sheet out from under a cup before it could get wet.
After seeing the last two readers out, I leaned against the table and finally noticed that my feet ached a little. My colleague came over to turn off the projector and asked if I’d like to keep leading the group.
“I would,” I said. “Keep the next few Wednesdays for me.”
She entered the next session on the calendar and helped me gather the books. Already I was thinking about how to get the group talking next Wednesday.
My phone chimed in my bag. It was Ethan’s aunt, asking if I had time for a call tonight. Just two minutes, she said.
I went into the hall and called her back. She didn’t ask me to consider anyone else’s difficulties this time. She simply said she’d been wrong to forward that message and blame me.
“I’ve wanted to say it in person, but I was afraid you’d think I was insisting you see me.” She paused. “I’m sorry, Claire.”
“I hear you.”
I’d already received Vivian’s correction from the original group chat. But hearing Ethan’s aunt brought back what she’d said about not holding things against a child, and my stomach tightened. I didn’t tell her it was all right. I only told her not to forward speculation about me again.
She agreed. I stayed in the hall until the tightness in my stomach eased, relieved that I hadn’t had to defend myself again.
Back in the meeting room, I marked the passage about the soup and photographed it. I wanted to tell someone I’d done it.
Ethan’s name was at the top of my messages. Once, I’d have sent him every detail before leaving work. Later, I’d had to ask whether he’d seen what I sent.
I sent the picture to Mia.
“Did the man who wouldn’t stop talking ever stop?” she asked.
“He even helped put the chairs away.”
“That deserves a special mention.”
Laughing, I held the book to my chest and turned off the lights.
At the apartment, I warmed a bowl of soup and settled into the blue chair by the window.
Nora was staying with her dad tonight, and the place was quiet enough for me to hear the heat come on.
I kicked off my shoes, opened the calendar on my phone, and entered the book group on the coming Wednesday evenings.
Ethan sent a photo. Nora wore the old shirt over her pajamas, its sleeves hanging to her knees, and held up her painting of a green seabird.
“She says it’s the most fashionable jacket in school and won’t take it off. How did your session go?”
“Pretty well,” I replied.
The soup was still very hot. I stirred it twice and picked up my phone again.
“We spent quite a while discussing whether a cook needs to finish making dinner after a murder. Someone said they’d ask about overtime pay first.”
His reply came quickly. “That question should be on the first page of every detective novel.”
The corners of my mouth lifted. I took a small sip of soup. The screen lit up again.
“What about the reader you said hadn’t spoken? Did she feel like talking later?”
I set the bowl on the little table, took my phone in both hands, and told him about the soup she’d found.