Chapter 24
GRAHAM
I had never arrived at Claire's apartment with nothing in my hands.
The first time, I had brought folders full of answers.
After that came ultrasound pictures, food, a screwdriver, boxes, forms, and whatever she had asked me to carry.
Tonight my phone held no list. I had left the wine in the store because Claire was pregnant, the flowers because she worked above several thousand of them, and the dessert because she had told me to bring nothing.
So I stood on the sidewalk at seven with my empty hands visible beneath the studio light.
Claire opened the door. She wore black pants and a cream shirt with the sleeves pushed to her elbows. The curve of her stomach had changed again since the appointment, though it had been just over a week. I noticed before I could make myself look at her face.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
She stepped back. “You can come up.”
The studio was dark except for the lights over the worktable. A row of buckets waited beside the cooler for morning, their paper labels turned toward the aisle. I knew where the broken-down boxes belonged now and which staircase tread made noise. None of that gave me a reason to stop downstairs.
Upstairs, the apartment smelled of garlic and rosemary. Two places had been set at the kitchen table. The shallow basket that usually held the ultrasound pictures was on the counter beside a hospital packet and paint samples, leaving the table clear except for a small vase and the food.
Claire took my coat and put it over the back of a chair.
“You really brought nothing.”
“I was given unusually specific instructions.”
“You considered ignoring them.”
“For twelve minutes in front of a bakery.”
Her smile appeared quickly. “And yet you survived.”
“It was close.”
She handed me a glass of water. I took the chair across from hers, though every meal we had eaten in the apartment before had put me beside her or at the corner of the table. Tonight the two places faced each other.
For the first few minutes, I waited for the reason.
There was always a reason. A question from a doctor, an update I had to give, a piece of furniture with bad instructions. Even the dinner when we almost kissed had held Audrey between us before the plates were cleared.
Claire served chicken and rice. She asked whether I wanted the roasted carrots. I said yes. Then she told me about a bride who had changed an entire wedding palette because her future mother-in-law considered coral aggressive.
“Aggressive how?” I asked.
“She said it entered the room before the bride did.”
“Did the coral apologize?”
“Not sincerely. We're moving forward with apricot.”
I cut into the chicken. “A color with better manners.”
Claire laughed into her water glass.
The sound loosened something I had kept braced since her message arrived.
I told her Theo had brought a beetle to school in his pencil case for show-and-tell. The beetle had been dead when he found it, but this had not improved the teacher's opinion of the plan.
“Did he at least empty the pencils first?” Claire asked.
“No. He says the red one now belongs to science.”
“He's right.”
“That was his position during the meeting.”
“There was a meeting?”
“I had pickup that afternoon, and Mrs. Bennett decided I should hear the phrase ‘classroom biohazard’ in person.”
Claire laughed again. “What did you do?”
“Bought him a specimen box and made him promise it would only contain things that had never been inside another animal.”
“That leaves more room than you think.”
“I discovered that later.”
We talked about a mystery novel Claire had left half-finished because every suspect described the weather too often.
I admitted I had read the ending after she moved out and had been angry on her behalf.
She accused me of skipping the middle. I denied it badly enough that she reached across the table and took the last carrot from my plate as a fine.
I let her have it.
The table grew easier around us. She ate from my plate once, then looked at the missing carrot as if she had only just remembered where she was.
I wanted to reach for her hand. I wanted to tell her she could take the rest of the food, the chair, the entire room.
Instead, I told her the soup from the restaurant on the corner was objectively better from her bowl.
“It is the same soup.”
“Then explain the evidence.”
“You order badly.”
“I order what you order.”
“Without conviction.”
For a while, I forgot to wait for the reason.
Claire gathered our empty plates and carried them to the sink. I brought the serving dish. When I reached for the towel, she pointed me toward the containers instead.
“You dry too slowly.”
“I was not aware this was timed.”
“Everything in a small kitchen is timed.”
I put the leftovers away under her supervision. The ordinary familiarity of it hurt in a place I could live with. She wrapped the chicken while I found the correct lid on my second attempt. Neither of us mentioned that I had once known every container in our house.
When the counters were clear, Claire leaned back against the sink and studied me.
“What did you think tonight was?”
I had several answers ready, all of them designed to keep the evening light. Her face made them useless.
“I thought it might be the last dinner you ever invited me to.”
Her eyebrows drew together. “Why would I invite you to dinner for that?”
“I came up with four reasons in the car.”
“Of course you did.”
“One involved returning the screwdriver.”
“The screwdriver is yours.”
“That weakened the theory.”
She looked down at the dish towel. “Were you scared to come?”
“Yes.”
The word sat between us without protection.
“I almost brought six different things,” I said. “Then I realized I didn't know how to walk in here with nothing useful to offer.”
Claire turned the folded towel over in her hands.
“I used to think being useful meant I was doing right by everyone,” I continued. “No. That's too clean. I liked being the one people called. If there was a problem to solve, I never had to ask whether I was in the wrong house.”
She raised her eyes to mine.
“There's nothing for you to fix tonight,” she said.
“I know.” My empty hands rested on my knees. “I still wanted to come.”
Her fingers tightened once around the towel.
I still wanted to ask what the evening meant. Claire folded the towel again, and I kept the question behind my teeth.
“Do you want to walk?” Claire asked.
“Yes.”
The night was warm enough to leave my coat upstairs.
We went down through the dark studio and turned toward the small park four blocks away.
Restaurants had opened their front windows to the street.
A dog strained at its leash outside the corner market, determined to inspect every tree box in order.
Claire walked more slowly than she had a month ago. I kept beside her. At the bookstore window, she stopped in front of a display of summer novels and pointed to one with a shirtless man standing in the rain.
“That seems inefficient,” I said.
“He's emotionally unavailable. Shirts would be misleading.”
“Does he describe the weather?”
“Only while suffering.”
We made it half a block before she started laughing again.
At the park, she chose the low stone wall beside the dry fountain and sat for a few minutes. I sat beside her, leaving enough room for her to shift comfortably.
“We used to walk after dinner,” she said.
“You said it helped you sleep.”
“You said it was exercise, then bought ice cream on the way home.”
“We walked to the ice cream.”
“A demanding fitness program.”
“You never complained about the results.”
She looked at me, her expression warm and a little startled.
For an instant, I could see the first apartment we had rented after the wedding, with its loud pipes and narrow fire escape.
We had eaten melting ice cream from the carton because the bowls were still packed.
The memory stayed gentle. It did not ask either of us to move back into it.
Claire stood and brushed a bit of grit from her pants. “Come on. Before you find a nutritionist to support your argument.”
By the time we returned, the windows above the studio were the only ones lit on the second floor. We climbed the narrow stairs and stopped outside her apartment. Claire unlocked the door, and I went in for my coat.
She stood between me and the open doorway while I pulled it on.
“Thank you for coming,” she said.
“Thank you for asking me.”
Her gaze dropped to my mouth.
I went still.
Claire stepped closer, caught the front of my coat in one hand, and kissed me.
The first touch was soft and certain. Then her mouth moved against mine, and months of memory returned with enough force to make my hands shake. I cupped the side of her face and kissed her back. She tasted faintly of lemon and the tea she had made after dinner.
Her fingers tightened in my coat. My other hand settled at her upper arm, and the kiss deepened for one breath, then another. Heat moved through me, familiar and startling.
She drew back. Her lips were pink, her breathing uneven.
I let my hands fall.
“I want to do that again,” she said.
“Now?”
The corner of her mouth lifted. “Eventually.”
“I can accept eventually.”
“I want dinner again,” she said. “And walks. Days when there isn't an appointment or a form.” She released my coat but stayed in front of me. “That is all I'm saying.”
Hope had already taken the sentence farther. I dragged it back.
“Dinner and walks,” I said.
“I'm not moving back to the house.”
“I know.”
“I might ask you here and then change my mind.”
“I'll be disappointed.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
“I can be disappointed and still leave,” I said.
The tension in her mouth eased, but did not disappear.
“I don't know what to call this.”
“Neither do I.” It was the least useful answer I had given her all evening, and the truest.
Claire touched her fingers to her lips as if the kiss had surprised her after all.
“Saturday,” she said. “Take me somewhere that doesn't have a screwdriver.”
“That removes several excellent options.”
“You'll manage.”
She stepped back and put one hand on the apartment door.
I wanted another kiss. I wanted to ask what Saturday meant. The questions stayed behind my teeth.
“Good night, Claire.”
“Good night, Graham.”
The door closed between us.
I stood on the landing long enough to hear her lock it, then walked downstairs with no name for what had begun.