The offer on the house arrived Tuesday morning while Iris was trying to find a replacement bulb for the display over homewares.
Four hundred and seven thousand dollars. Subject to the inspection, the financing and a list of other conditions the agent explained while Iris stood in a cupboard smelling of cardboard.
She sat on an unopened box of lampshades.
“Is that a good offer?”
“It’s a serious one. We can discuss a counter.”
They did. The agent would speak to Colin separately, then come back to both of them with the same information in writing. Iris appreciated the arrangement more than she would once have thought necessary.
After the call, she remained seated.
She had wanted the house sold. She wanted it sold now. Neither fact made the number feel like an ordinary amount of money. It was a garden, a roof needing attention, the kitchen where Beth had learned to crack eggs, expressed in digits that strangers could revise.
Hugh opened the cupboard door.
“Bulb?”
“Yes.”
He found it above her head, where she hadn’t thought to look because she’d been holding the phone.
“You all right?”
“An offer on the house.”
“Good?”
“I think so.”
He nodded. “My daughter cried when they sold their apartment. Hated it while she lived there. Cried anyway.”
“Was that meant to help?”
“I don’t know. Did it?”
“A little.”
He handed her the bulb.
At lunchtime, Colin called.
“I think we should counter,” he said.
She had expected him to want the quickest possible sale. The fact that he didn’t made her have to listen rather than prepare an argument.
“So do I.”
“The agent thinks four fifteen is reasonable.”
“I heard.”
“There’ll be something about the roof. It’s older than they expected.”
“It’s older than I expected. I still think of it as the new roof.”
He laughed briefly. So did she, before she could stop herself.
Then the quiet returned, different because they’d shared the joke.
“Iris—”
“Let’s finish the house.”
“All right.”
They agreed on the counter, with the roof question to be addressed after the inspection rather than guessed around.
“Where will you go?” Colin asked.
“I haven’t chosen yet.”
“You could stay until—”
“No. If we sell, I’ll move.”
“I meant we don’t have to rush you.”
“I know.”
She did know. He was capable of consideration. It had not kept him from doing the other things. She no longer needed him to be entirely cruel in order for leaving him to make sense.
After work she looked at rental listings.
Most were too expensive, too far away or described a cupboard as a study. One above a shop on River Street had a bedroom, a small sitting room and a kitchen with a window that opened. No garden. Space for a table, a bookcase, her own ordinary belongings.
She booked a viewing for Wednesday.
Then she looked at the map. Eight minutes’ walk from Mason Street. Ten from the store, though that would soon stop being a useful measure. A bus to Providence from the corner.
She closed the map before she could make the bus into a plan Daniel had not agreed to.
The next evening, the apartment smelled of fresh paint and someone else’s laundry detergent. The current tenant was moving to live with her sister. She had left a plant on the kitchen sill and apologized for the boxes.
“I thought you were supposed to apologize if you’d hidden all the boxes,” Iris said.
The woman laughed. “Fair point.”
The landlord showed her the cupboards, the boiler controls, the meter. The rooms were smaller than hers at home and did not pretend otherwise. The sitting room faced the street. The bedroom faced a patchwork of back yards, with washing lines and a tree she’d have to learn the name of.
Iris stood in the middle and tried to imagine a morning.
Not an improved version of the old house. A different one. Coffee. The bus below. A walk to work that ended at her own door.
“How soon would it be available?” she asked.
The answer fitted the proposed house timeline, if the sale proceeded. There were references, a deposit, ordinary checks. She took the application and asked for time to read it.
On the walk home, she passed Mason Street. Saul was closing the barber’s. He saw her through the glass and waved. Above him, her room was dark.
She stopped on the opposite sidewalk.
The room and the apartment together would cost less than trying to make Mill Lane carry both a business and every hope she had attached to it. It wasn’t effortless. It was possible on the cautious plan she’d made, with savings reserved and no house proceeds spent twice.
She wanted Daniel there. Not in either lease. In the evenings, in the part of the day nobody had measured for income. The wanting had not gone merely because she had learned to draw it more accurately.
At home she found a message from him.
I’ve changed some work arrangements. Not the Oregon commitment. I’d like to explain when this week is over. No answer needed now.
She sat at the table and read it carefully.
The message did not prove anything. Work arrangements could mean nearly anything. She wanted to ask, wanted the sound of his voice enough that her thumb hovered over the call button.
Instead she typed: Tuesday evening, if that suits. After I’ve had the first day in the room.
His answer came five minutes later.
Tuesday. Thank you. Where would you like to meet?
She thought about the cafe, the park, the house where they had argued. All seemed either too public or too full of things she hadn’t put away.
The studio, she wrote. Seven. We can bring chairs.
I can bring one, he replied. You bought the other.
She stared at the screen, then remembered Winnie would have told Hugh, Hugh would have mentioned delivery, Daniel had been checking the fixture movements. The chair was not private in the way her grief had felt private.
For the first time that day, she smiled.
One each, she wrote.
Then she put the phone down and filled in the rental application.