Chapter 9
Claire
Audrey bought a table that arrived in twenty-seven pieces and had the nerve to call itself simple assembly.
I found her on the floor beside it, reading the instructions as though they had personally insulted her profession.
“Where's the old table?” I asked.
“The owner collected it. I wanted something that could extend when people came over.”
“Ambitious. You know three people.”
“I'm considering a fourth.”
I looked at her.
“Ethan's coming at six,” she said.
Of course he was.
I put down the grocery bag. “For the table?”
“To discuss a few practical things. Calls, weekends, money we share. The table was supposed to be finished.”
“Then he can help.”
She looked surprised that I said it.
I was surprised too. Perhaps I wanted to watch a man worth billions struggle with an Allen key. We all require recreation.
Audrey had been seeing him for several weeks by then. Drinks. Dinner. An evening discussing a film neither of them could agree about. She returned from these outings with color in her face, which I found both encouraging and inconvenient.
I wanted her happy. I also wanted happiness to submit a reliable forecast first.
She moved to lift the tabletop.
“Wait,” I said. “Two people. That's not a statement about your character. It's a statement about the table.”
She sat back on her heels.
“Thank you for specifying.”
We managed to get it onto a blanket before the buzzer went.
Ethan arrived carrying milk, lemons, and a loaf of bread.
“That's all?” I asked before I could stop myself.
Audrey gave me a look.
“He asked what I needed.”
Ethan held out the bag. “The shop didn't have the bread you named. This was the nearest version. I kept the receipt in case that's a serious failure.”
“Depends on the crust,” Audrey said.
He took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and looked at the floor.
“Would you like help?”
“Yes,” she said. “Please tell me you understand this diagram.”
He studied it.
“Of course.”
I liked him least when he sounded certain.
Ten minutes later, I liked him considerably more.
“That piece is upside down,” I said.
“No, the hole aligns here.”
“With what?”
“The bracket.”
“The bracket that goes on the other side?”
Audrey pressed her lips together.
Ethan looked from the diagram to the wooden support.
“Possibly.”
“Excellent,” I said. “We have achieved uncertainty. Progress.”
He handed me the instructions.
“You take over.”
I did.
Seven minutes after that, Audrey said, “Claire, you've put the same piece upside down.”
Ethan's expression became offensively pleasant.
“It's a poor diagram,” I said.
“Clearly,” he agreed.
Audrey laughed. A real laugh, head tipped back, one hand over her mouth. I hadn't heard that sound in weeks without listening for the cough afterward.
This time it was only laughter.
I decided the table could remain unfinished forever if necessary.
While Ethan searched beneath the packing paper, my phone rang. A client. I glanced at the screen and silenced it.
“You can take that,” Audrey said.
“It can wait.”
“Can it?”
I checked the time. A payroll question at this hour probably meant somebody had discovered a mistake before the bank cutoff.
“Five minutes,” I said, then winced at the phrase.
Audrey rolled her eyes. “Claire. It's a real job. Go answer.”
In the kitchen, I resolved the missing-hours entry, confirmed the corrected total, and told the client when I'd send the record. It took six minutes. When I came back, Audrey and Ethan were comparing two nearly identical screws.
They hadn't fallen apart in my absence.
I sat down and thought about that longer than the occasion deserved. Attention didn't mean never turning toward anything else. It meant making the turn honestly, returning when you said you would, and not treating the person waiting as unreasonable for noticing the time.
Audrey handed me the smaller screws.
“Your department.”
“I've been promoted.”
“Laterally.”
Ethan looked at me over the tabletop.
“Everything settled?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
There was no clever comment about how difficult it was to balance work and family. He could have made one, and I would have disliked him for it. Instead, he returned to the diagram.
I tried to grant him the same courtesy: the right to do one thing correctly without making it answer for every wrong thing he'd done.
It was harder than it sounded. Protectiveness had given me a very comfortable seat from which to judge. Getting up from it required admitting that Audrey's happiness would never be entirely within my control, even if she left him forever.
I sorted the screws with unnecessary concentration and said nothing about that discovery.
We eventually turned the instructions around, discovered the missing page tucked beneath the packaging, and became a much more competent team. Ethan tightened bolts while Audrey checked the alignment. I sorted screws and claimed that management was my natural gift.
At one point, Audrey sat back and rubbed her wrist.
Ethan stopped.
“Break?”
“I can finish.”
“You can. Do you want to?”
She considered it.
“Five minutes.”
He put the tool down.
I had expected him to seize the moment and send her to bed. Instead, he asked where she wanted the kettle filled and listened when she told him. It was a small thing. I was becoming suspicious of how often small things mattered.
We ate soup around the table after we finished it. It stood level, which felt like an achievement worth recording for future generations.
Ethan reached for the bread and asked Audrey about an argument she'd had with Ruth.
“The coats,” he said. “Did the storage revision get approved?”
She looked up.
“Yes. Yesterday.”
“Good.”
He knew about the coats. I did not.
That pricked more than I expected.
I had become accustomed to being the person who knew. Appointments, bad nights, the meals she could manage. I hadn't noticed that my usefulness could become another kind of possessiveness until it sat across from me over soup.
After dinner, they talked about practical arrangements while I washed the bowls in the kitchen. Audrey wanted expenses connected to the old house kept separate from her apartment. Shared investments would remain accessible to both. She didn't want to be asked for a return date every time they met.
Ethan took notes only after asking whether it would bother her.
“It's helpful,” she said. “As long as you don't call this the reconciliation action plan.”
He crossed something out.
She leaned forward. “You didn't.”
“No.”
His face betrayed him.
She covered her eyes. “Ethan.”
“It was a working title.”
I laughed into the dish towel before I could help it.
They were still them. That was perhaps the hardest part. I had hoped she could simply become a woman who no longer wanted him. Instead, she wanted the man he sometimes was and needed to know whether that man could stay.
At eight, he looked at the clock.
“I should go.”
Audrey didn't ask him to remain. He kissed her cheek only after she leaned toward him, collected his coat, and thanked me for dinner.
“I heated soup,” I said.
“You supervised a difficult table.”
“A leadership challenge.”
He smiled, and I remembered liking him once.
I tested the table with one cautious hand. It held. Perhaps that was all an evening had to accomplish: something useful, assembled imperfectly, still standing after everybody stopped watching it.
After the door closed, Audrey cleared the cups.
“Well?” she asked.
I pretended not to understand.
She looked at me over her shoulder. “You've been conducting an inspection since six.”
“An informal one.”
“And?”
“He appears to have learned where the kettle lives.”
“Claire.”
I sat down.
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
The answer caught me.
“Then why—”
“Because certainty isn't something I can demand before I make every choice. I'm sure I wanted tonight. I'm sure he listened when I asked him to leave last week. I'm not sure about the rest yet.”
I picked at a tiny piece of packaging still stuck to the table.
“I don't want you hurt again.”
“I know.” She sat opposite me. “But I can't build a life entirely around preventing you from worrying.”
That was annoyingly fair.
“I liked him tonight,” I admitted.
“You're allowed.”
“It doesn't mean I've forgotten.”
“I haven't asked you to.”
We sat quietly for a while. Below the window, somebody argued with a parking meter. The ordinary world remained committed to its own dramas.
“Will you stop keeping your bedroom ready for me?” she asked.
My throat tightened.
“You might need it.”
“I might need you. That's different.”
I looked at my sister, who had survived something terrible and was still entitled to make choices I couldn't supervise.
“All right.”
At home, I took the spare sheets from the chair where they'd waited since she'd moved out. I folded them and put them in the cupboard.
Then I changed my own bed, opened the window an inch, and slept in my room without listening for someone in the next one.