“You can’t put adultery in the reason-for-return box,” Colin said.
Iris looked from her husband to the silver bracelet resting on its little velvet cushion. He had given it to her nine weeks ago, across a restaurant table sticky with spilled prosecco, and said twenty-nine years was something to celebrate. On Tuesday he had told her about Valerie. This morning he had brought the bracelet to her counter at Hargreaves, with the receipt.
“I haven’t typed anything.” She turned the screen an inch toward him. “You appear to be filling in the boxes yourself.”
Behind Colin, a woman holding a defective milk frother lowered it slowly into her shopping bag. Nobody in the queue moved.
“It’s on the joint card,” he said, more quietly. “I need the money for the apartment deposit. Surely you can see that.”
Iris closed the bracelet case. Until that small click, she had been wondering what she would do if she cried. Now she was wondering how long she had been helping him leave.
“You took this from my dresser.”
“I brought the box. I thought you’d prefer not to make another trip.”
“The bracelet, Colin. You took my bracelet.”
His ears turned pink. She knew the progression: ears first, then a flush along the neck, then the reasonable tone in which he explained why whatever she had noticed was less important than the fact she’d noticed it.
“I gave it to you,” he said. “I realize that. But under the circumstances—”
“It’s still mine.”
A soft mechanical whine came from the escalator. Upstairs, someone tested a vacuum cleaner in three short bursts. Hargreaves continued to sell things around them, indifferent to the particular humiliation occurring at customer service.
The woman with the frother cleared her throat.
“I can come back.”
“No, you can’t,” Iris said, too sharply. Then, “I’m sorry. I mean, you shouldn’t have to. Colin, you’ll need to step aside.”
He looked at the woman. The woman looked at the ceiling, which was the most discouraging thing she could have done. If she’d been glaring, he might have defended himself. Instead she had awarded him the attention he deserved.
“Iris.”
“I’m working.”
She put the bracelet case in the drawer beside her handbag. The receipt lay between them. Colin picked it up, folded it twice and slipped it into his jacket pocket.
“You said you wanted us to be civil.”
“I do. Please let Mrs. Morrow return her frother.”
Mrs. Morrow looked startled that Iris remembered her name. Iris remembered almost everybody’s name. She had recently discovered this was different from people remembering hers.
Colin left without another word. His shoes made hard, familiar sounds on the tiled aisle. She watched him turn beside the travel display. He had bought the pale blue suitcase for their anniversary trip in June. It was upstairs at home now, empty on top of the wardrobe, waiting for a holiday they had never booked.
Mrs. Morrow set the frother on the counter.
“It heats the milk,” she said carefully. “Just doesn’t froth it.”
“We’ll fix that.”
Iris scanned the receipt, checked the return date and processed the refund. Her fingers knew the work. That was a mercy. On the screen, a green tick appeared as if something had been accomplished.
“Thank you, dear.” Mrs. Morrow hesitated. “My first husband took our good scissors. Drove back forty miles for them.”
Iris looked up.
“Did you give them to him?”
“Of course not. They were my scissors.”
For a moment they considered one another across the counter. Then Iris laughed. It arrived wrong, halfway to a cough, but it was a laugh, and Mrs. Morrow smiled with immense satisfaction.
When the queue had cleared, Iris went into the little office behind customer service and shut the door.
No window. A filing cabinet that needed lifting by one corner before its top drawer would open. The framed photograph of Leonard Hargreaves shaking a governor’s hand, both men looking as if they hoped the other had washed. She had worked in this office for eleven years. In a former version of her future, she had imagined leaving it by choice.
She sat down and put both feet flat on the floor. At some point her whole body had begun to tremble, efficiently, without consulting her.
Her phone vibrated.
Beth: Dad says things got awkward at the store. Are you okay?
She typed, He took my anniversary present out of my dresser to return it for a deposit on his love nest.
Then she stared at the message.
Beth was twenty-seven, a museum education assistant in Boston, with a rent increase pending and a boyfriend who thought teaspoons belonged in every drawer. She knew her father had left. She did not need an itemized account of what leaving looked like.
Iris deleted love nest. Then she deleted everything.
I’m okay. Busy morning. Love you.
The lie sat in the blue bubble looking much healthier than she felt.
A knock came at the door.
“Unless you’re bringing scissors,” she said, “give me a minute.”
Silence.
“I can probably find some,” a man’s voice said. “What size?”
She closed her eyes. “Who is it?”
“Daniel Cho. I have an eleven o’clock appointment.”
Of course he did. She had made it herself on Monday, when the worst thing that had happened to her that week was a leaking staff-room refrigerator.
“I’m coming.”
She checked the small mirror inside the supply cupboard. Her copper-brown bob had a kink where she’d tucked it behind her ear. Her lipstick had survived. Her face was the same broad face she had washed this morning, a little fuller than at forty, fine lines beside her gray-green eyes. There was nothing on it that said her husband had found her replaceable.
This seemed both unfair and useful.
She opened the door.
Daniel Cho stood a discreet distance away, holding a slim black case. He was taller than she expected from his voice, with a substantial, steady build, closely cropped black hair silvering at the sides and a navy jacket that had been repaired neatly at one cuff. His features were spare and strong, the lines beside his mouth deeper on one side.
He was also looking directly at her, not past her into the office or down toward the name badge on her chest.
“Bad time?”
“Yes,” she said.
He nodded. “I can wait.”
It was such an uncomplicated response that she almost resented him for it.
“No. It’s fine. Come in.”
He did not ask about the scissors.
They sat on opposite sides of the desk. His chair gave its customary descending sigh, lowering him an inch. He glanced at it, then at her.
“That’s not a judgment,” she said. “It does it to everyone.”
“Good to know.”
He set his case on the floor rather than her desk. There were no rings on his hands. She noticed because she was thinking about rings. Hers felt tight this morning, although it had fitted perfectly well on Tuesday.
“Thank you for sending the stock summary,” he said. “I have some questions about alterations and held goods.”
“We can go upstairs. Some of the paper records haven’t been scanned.”
“Before we do, I want to be clear about my role. I’m valuing the remaining inventory and fixtures for the estate. I’m not here to decide which staff stay during the closure.”
“But you’ll recommend how the goods are sold.”
“Yes.”
“Which decides how long the staff stay.”
He considered that. “It can affect the timetable.”
“Then we’d better not be too comforting about the distinction.”
For the first time, his expression changed. Not much. A small tightening around the eyes, as though she had put a ruler next to a line he had drawn and he didn’t care for the measurement.
“Fair enough.”
She stood.
Hargreaves occupied three floors of a brick building on Wrenford’s main street, with a fourth floor given over to offices, storage and whatever people had been meaning to deal with since 1983. In seventy-one years it had survived a department-store chain opening by the highway, two recessions and the arrival of shopping on a telephone. It had not survived the death of Leonard Hargreaves and the perfectly understandable reluctance of his children to run it.
Six weeks remained. Six weeks of sales, collections, handshakes and strangers saying it was a shame while buying towels reduced by twenty percent.
Iris had agreed to coordinate the farewell sale. She was still not certain whether this was loyalty or the inability to walk away from a job because she knew where everything was.
On the second floor, Mr. Cho stopped beside a rack of winter coats.
“Are these included in the spreadsheet?”
“Yes. The tan trench coats on the other side are customer orders. Paid deposits. They’re marked.”
He went around the rack and checked the tags.
She waited for him to say he’d taken her word for it. He didn’t. He checked four tags, entered something on a tablet and came back.
“I’ll need a separate list for those.”
“You already have one. Second tab.”
He opened it. A pause.
“So I do.”
She should have found that satisfying. Instead it was oddly disarming that he simply admitted it.
Behind the fitting rooms, the old alterations department smelled of steam, wool and the lavender hand cream Winnie still left beside the iron. Iris unlocked the tall cupboard and lifted out the hold ledger.
Winnie had retired officially at Christmas. She still came in on Thursdays, disapproved of the tea and altered her friends’ trousers. Nobody had found a form appropriate to this arrangement.
Daniel ran a finger down a page without touching the ink.
“Some of these are quite old.”
“People forget.”
“A wedding suit?”
She looked where he was pointing. Arthur Mercer. Navy wool. Jacket and trousers. Fully paid. Last contact nine months ago.
“That should have been collected.”
“Apparently.”
“He was having surgery. We told him not to worry about it until he was well.”
“Did he recover?”
“I don’t know.”
The admission hurt more than she expected. She remembered Mr. Mercer’s careful handwriting, his delight at finding a suit that did not make him look like a man dressed for a disciplinary hearing. She had taken the cuffs up herself when Winnie had flu.
“I’ll call him.”
Daniel wrote something down.
“You don’t have to record that as a failure,” she said.
He looked at her. “I wrote, Do not include customer property.”
“Oh.”
“We’ll need a physical check against this ledger. Not today if you’re short of staff.”
“We’re always short of staff.”
“All right. Which day are you least short?”
She almost smiled. It irritated her that he had noticed.
His phone rang. He checked the screen, silenced it and put it away.
“I can take that,” she said. “I’m used to people working around me.”
“No. We have an appointment.”
He said it without emphasis, already turning back to the ledger. She found herself looking at his hands again.
That was enough of that.
They spent forty minutes checking held stock. A prom dress. Three pairs of uniform trousers. A cashmere cardigan waiting for a replacement button. Objects suspended between a purchase and a life, each tagged with a name and a date.
At the end, Daniel lifted a flat cardboard box from the top shelf. Iris recognized the handwriting before he set it down.
I. Bell. Adjust straps. Staff purchase.
“Oh,” she said.
“Yours?”
“Yes. It can go downstairs.”
He did not open it. She was grateful for that. Inside lay a green silk dress she had bought eighteen months ago for a dinner Colin had canceled because of work. There had been other opportunities. She had decided every time that it was too much trouble to finish the straps.
Daniel put the box beside her bag.
Back in the office, he packed his tablet into its case.
“I should tell you something before you hear it from someone else,” he said.
Iris lowered herself into her chair.
“The estate has received a bulk offer for the remaining retail stock. Subject to inspection.”
“We’re selling it ourselves.”
“That was the original plan. The offer covers most stock and removal costs. It may be financially preferable.”
She could hear the vacuum cleaner again through the wall. Someone was demonstrating its attachments with the dogged enthusiasm of a person whose commission mattered.
“What happens to the sale?”
“If they accept, there’d be a short clearance period for customer collections.”
“How short?”
He hesitated, which was the first kind thing she wished he hadn’t done.
“How short, Mr. Cho?”
“Ten days.”
She looked toward the little cardboard dress box. There were things she had left too late because she thought there would be another occasion. Apparently she had done the same with a building full of people.
“And when were they planning to tell us?”
“They haven’t decided yet.”
“Then why tell me?”
“Because you know this stock, these commitments and the staff. If there is a case against it, I need the numbers.”
She looked at him carefully. “Are you asking me to do your job?”
“No. I’m telling you what mine will consider.”
Through the open door she could see the edge of the counter, the little sign asking customers to have receipts ready. For twenty-nine years she had stood there explaining what could and could not be taken back.
Iris pulled the keyboard toward her.
“What numbers?”