Daniel’s father was standing in the garden wearing the shoes.
Iris recognized them before she saw his face: loose at the heels, flattened at the backs, entirely unsuitable for the wet path between the greenhouse and the kitchen door. Daniel stopped beside her with a paper bag of pastries in one hand.
“Don’t,” Iris murmured.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You’ve inhaled.”
He looked at her, then laughed under his breath.
Min-jae Cho turned at the sound. He had his son’s straight brows and none of his height, a neat white head of hair and a face arranged around the expectation that people might be entertaining if allowed to continue.
“Daniel. You’ve brought the food.”
“And Iris.”
“Yes, I see that. I was getting to the important part.”
He came down the path more securely than the shoes suggested and took Iris’s hand. His grip was dry and warm.
“Come in. The kettle’s boiled twice. My son said twelve. It’s twelve.”
Daniel looked at his watch. “It’s eleven fifty-nine.”
“Then you’re early. The kitchen isn’t ready.”
Iris liked him immediately.
The house was small and bright, with photographs on the stairs and gardening catalogues stacked on a chair. Through the open back door she could see pots of seedlings arranged in a succession of plastic trays. The greenhouse catch remained a twist of wire.
Daniel saw her glance at it.
“Don’t,” he said quietly.
“I haven’t inhaled.”
His father looked between them and smiled without asking for an explanation.
There was another coat on the kitchen hook. Iris noticed it just before a woman came through the back door carrying a bowl of washed lettuce.
“You must be Iris. I’m Sylvia.”
She was in her late seventies, broad-shouldered, with short gray hair, red spectacles and a wooden bead necklace that knocked softly against the bowl. She put the lettuce down and took the pastry bag from Daniel before he could find a surface.
“Your father’s told me about the store.”
“Has he?” Daniel asked.
“Some of it.”
Min-jae began arranging cups. “We were discussing what a pity it is.”
Daniel looked at Iris. She could see him trying not to ask how frequently the discussion had occurred.
Lunch was soup, bread, salad and too many pastries. Min-jae said Sylvia had made the soup; Sylvia said she had used his pan and therefore half the credit was his. They had the easy, irritating rhythm of people who had been making each other laugh in private for longer than the family knew.
Iris watched Daniel absorb this while passing the bread.
“How did you meet?” she asked Sylvia.
“Garden society. He told me I was overwatering a cutting.”
“You were,” Min-jae said.
“It lived.”
“After you stopped.”
Sylvia rolled her eyes with evident affection. Daniel cut his bread into pieces and said nothing.
Iris put a hand briefly against his knee beneath the table. He looked at her, and the tension around his mouth eased.
His father asked about the new room. Daniel had told him she was starting a business, which pleased her more than being introduced as the woman he’d taken to the cinema.
“Alterations,” she explained. “Some resale, once I know what people want.”
“Do people still have things repaired?” Sylvia asked.
“They do when they like them enough.”
“Or can’t replace them,” Min-jae said. “Daniel wants me to replace everything.”
“Not everything.”
“Only the shoes, the greenhouse catch and my telephone.”
“The telephone stopped charging.”
“It charges if I hold it a certain way.”
Sylvia laughed. Iris looked down at her soup, unwilling to reward either side too obviously.
After lunch, Min-jae took her into the garden while Daniel and Sylvia cleared the table. The ground was soft, the narrow beds full of things beginning rather than finished. He showed her seedlings she could not identify and did not pretend to.
“My wife liked flowers,” he said. “I grew vegetables. Now I do both.”
“Does it take much time?”
“All the time I give it.”
He stopped at the greenhouse door and unwound the wire. Inside, the air was warmer, damp with the smell of soil and leaves. On a shelf lay the unopened packet containing the catch Daniel had sent.
“Will you use it?” Iris asked.
“Probably.”
She smiled.
“He worries,” Min-jae said.
“I know.”
“Worrying is a way of feeling useful without admitting you’re frightened.”
She looked at him. He was inspecting a seedling, not waiting for agreement.
“He’s not always worried,” she said.
“No?”
“Sometimes he’s quite annoying for other reasons.”
His laugh filled the little greenhouse. Daniel appeared at the door at exactly the wrong moment.
“I suspected,” he said.
His father waved him inside, still laughing. There was barely room for three. Iris stepped nearer Daniel, and his hand settled automatically at her back.
Min-jae noticed. He said nothing. He picked up the packet, turned it over and asked Daniel whether he’d brought the right size.
On the drive home, Daniel was quiet until they reached the main road.
“What did he tell you?”
“About the seedlings?”
“Iris.”
She laughed. “Nothing you need to confiscate.”
“He likes you.”
“I like him.”
“Sylvia too?”
“Very much.”
He glanced at her. “Apparently I missed a development.”
“Apparently you did.”
“I don’t mind.”
She waited.
“I don’t,” he said again, then caught himself and smiled. “I just wish he’d told me.”
“Perhaps he wanted to know what it was before he told you.”
Daniel drove for a little while without speaking. She watched the houses give way to a stretch of open land, the afternoon light moving across his hands on the wheel.
“Did you tell Beth about me before she came?” he asked.
“Yes. Not much. Enough that she wasn’t surprised.”
“I was more surprised than she was.”
“I noticed.”
“I’m not used to being a mother’s new—” He stopped.
“New what?”
“Person.”
Iris laughed. “That sounds bureaucratic.”
“It was the least alarming word I found.”
“What would you prefer?”
He looked at her briefly, then back at the road.
“Lover.”
The word warmed her face before she could do anything about it.
“That’s considerably less bureaucratic.”
“I hoped so.”
She laid her hand on his thigh, above the knee, and left it there. His smile appeared slowly, private and unmistakable.
Back in Wrenford, they stopped at the house so she could collect the things she needed for work Monday. She was staying at his place again. The bag she packed was no longer an experiment.
While she was upstairs, a message came through from the agent. A viewing requested for Tuesday evening. The house had been photographed, the description approved and the listing prepared. Iris looked at the words while standing in the bedroom where Beth had slept as a child.
Tuesday was possible. She would be out. She typed her agreement.
Then she went downstairs, where Daniel stood in the dining room looking at the garden.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
“A viewing. Tuesday.”
He turned toward her.
“That’s good,” she said before he could. “It’s what we want.”
“It can be good and strange.”
“Yes.”
He came nearer, but she held up the overnight bag first.
“I’ve brought a toothbrush this time. You’ll have to find a new way to impress me.”
He took the bag, smiling. “I’ve learned the toaster.”
“An ambitious claim.”
“We’ll see.”
At his apartment, the chicken had become an omelet. It was excellent. He served it without asking whether eggs represented a decline in her standing, and she ate it without needing the joke.
Later, lying beside him in the quiet, she thought about his father’s garden. The old flowers and the new vegetables. Sylvia’s coat on the hook. The catch he would probably use when he was ready to choose it himself.
Daniel turned in his sleep and put an arm around her.
She let the thought go and moved closer.