On Saturday morning Daniel made coffee while Iris checked the message from the estate agent.
The couple who had viewed on Tuesday wanted a second look. This afternoon, if possible. The garden had worked its persuasion, apparently, though they had questions about the roof.
She put the phone down.
“More strangers in the house?” Daniel asked.
“Possibly the same strangers.”
“An improvement.”
She smiled, still half inside the happiness of the night before. He stood barefoot beside her counter, sleeves pushed up, hair uncombed. She loved him. The thought no longer needed testing against some future version of herself.
“Could you look at the little shelf before you go?” she asked. “The one I mentioned for the studio. I found the brackets.”
“Today?”
“Not put it up. Just tell me if they’re the right ones. I’ll need to order anything else before next Friday.”
He set the coffee down.
“Iris, I can’t be there Friday.”
She looked up.
“For the opening.”
“Oh.”
“That’s when I travel.”
The room seemed to grow more precise around her. The spoon on the counter. The yellow tulips opening too far. His shirt folded over the chair where he had left it last night.
“Oregon?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve accepted.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Wednesday.”
She stared at him. Wednesday. Before rehearsal. Before he had looked at the opening card and said he needed to check things.
“I asked you Thursday.”
“You asked about the call.”
“I asked if everything was all right.”
“It was.”
“You knew what I meant.”
He looked away, toward the window. That small movement hurt more than a disagreement would have.
“I should have told you,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I was going to. I didn’t want to bring it into the evening before the show.”
“You came here Thursday.”
“I know.”
“And Friday.”
“I know.”
She stood up, not because she wanted to leave but because sitting made the conversation feel as if she were receiving news from someone who had already dealt with it.
“You said you’d tell me when you decided.”
“I did. I got it wrong.”
He said it too quickly, as if admission ought to have made the difficult part short. She recognized the efficiency and felt her anger arrive at last.
“You didn’t forget to tell me. You decided not to.”
He looked at her.
“For a couple of days.”
“While I was making plans.”
“You were making plans without asking me.”
She stopped. There was enough truth in it to make the words land.
“Yes,” she said. “I was. I shouldn’t have told you what you’d do at my opening. I heard myself do it. That’s why I added if you were free.”
“I wasn’t.”
“And you let me keep thinking you might be.”
Silence.
Outside, the neighbor’s cat jumped onto the wall and began washing its paw, entirely untroubled by human arrangements.
Daniel rubbed a hand over his face.
“I didn’t want this to become a negotiation about whether I took the job.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Would you have been happy?”
“No. I’d have missed you. I said I could miss you for six weeks.”
“That isn’t the same as being all right with it.”
“What would you like me to do? Be delighted you’re leaving?”
He looked tired suddenly, not from sleep but from the work of defending a position he hadn’t expected to need so soon.
“I’ve spent years arranging my own work. I don’t know how to start discussing every decision with someone.”
“Neither do I. But you said you wanted to be here after the store closed.”
“I do.”
“And you’ve arranged to leave during the first week.”
“For six weeks. Not forever.”
“I know the length of the assignment.”
She could hear her voice rising and hated it. She walked to the sink and put both palms against the cold edge. For a moment she looked out at the garden rather than him.
Behind her, Daniel said, “I don’t want us to turn five weeks into a marriage.”
The sentence settled with a quietness that frightened her.
She turned.
“Neither do I.”
His face changed. He had heard it too late.
“I didn’t mean—”
“What did you mean?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
She waited. This time the silence was not something she could improve by talking.
“I meant I need to work,” he said at last.
“So do I.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because I’ve spent this month taking apart a life I thought I understood. I’ve made choices you haven’t made for me, and I haven’t asked you to pay for them. I haven’t asked you to stay in Wrenford and put up shelves because I’ve discovered I like being kissed.”
His eyes closed briefly.
“I know you haven’t.”
“Then don’t make me into someone who’s trying to stop you having a life.”
He took a step toward her. She stayed where she was.
“You matter to me,” he said.
“I believed you.”
“I wasn’t lying last night.”
“I don’t think you were.”
That seemed to hurt him more than disbelief would have. She saw the pain in his face and felt the familiar impulse to soften whatever she was about to say.
She didn’t.
“But you were keeping something from me because you thought my reaction would be inconvenient. I know what that feels like. I don’t want to begin there again.”
He looked down at his hands.
“I need time,” he said.
“To decide whether you want me?”
“No. To work out how to do this without making promises I can’t keep.”
She swallowed. The anger had not gone. Beneath it was something more frightening: the possibility that wanting each other would not be enough.
“Then take it,” she said.
He looked up.
“I can’t do this morning as if nothing’s happened. I can’t have you in my bed while we wait to find out whether there’s anywhere for me in your plans.”
“Iris.”
She shook her head. Not refusing his name for her. Refusing the plea inside it, the request to let tenderness stand in for an answer.
He stood very still. Then he nodded once.
He went upstairs for his things. She stayed in the kitchen, listening to drawers not open, cupboards not close, the small sounds of a man who had brought very little and had no claim on anything else.
At the door he turned.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“I’ll call.”
“Please don’t call just to tell me you miss me.”
The words hurt her as she said them. His face tightened.
“All right.”
He left.
For a long time Iris stood beside the dining table. The coffee had gone cold. The second cup remained half full, a ring of brown near the rim.
She had wanted honesty and got it in pieces too small to live on. She had asked him to go and wanted to open the door before his car reached the corner.
At ten, the agent called about the second viewing. Iris answered normally enough that the woman did not ask whether she was ill.
“Yes,” she said. “This afternoon is fine.”
She put the cups in the dishwasher. Then she took the tulips out of the jug, changed their water and put them back.
They were still flowers. She was not required to throw away every good thing because it had become painful to look at.