She got her purse and her keys.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said.
“Eleanor has Vivian on the schedule tomorrow.” The afghan had slipped off one knee and he hadn’t fixed it.
“Eleanor will reschedule.” Margo pulled on her coat.
He looked at her from his chair.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome.”
He hesitated a moment. “For more than the soup.”
She stood with her hand on the doorknob. She could hear the refrigerator running in the kitchen behind her.
“Eat the bread tomorrow,” she said. “There’s cheddar in the drawer.”
“Thank you.”
Margo nodded. “Goodnight, Bernard.”
“Goodnight, Margo.”
She pulled the door closed behind her until she heard it click.
The walk home was a few blocks in the cool pale February light. She passed the houses she’d been passing for years. The yellow Craftsman with the bougainvillea that needed pruning. The Spanish on the corner where the woman with the small dogslived. The empty lot they’d been arguing about at city council since 2018.
She let herself in, hung her coat, and put her keys in the bowl. She went to the kitchen, filled the kettle, placed it on the stove, and didn’t turn the burner on.
She went to the studio.
The canvas from the night of Bernie’s knee was where she’d left it. Thirty inches by forty. The gray she’d mixed, dried on the palette in a small thick disk she’d have to scrape off and throw away. The brush she’d loaded, washed and dried and put back in the jar.
She stood in front of it.
She didn’t pick up the brush.
After a minute she turned off the studio light and went back into the kitchen. She turned the burner on under the kettle and stood at the counter and waited for the water to boil.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They were halfway down the arrivals corridor at Phoenix Sky Harbor with their bags and the carry-ons they’d packed small enough they wouldn’t have to check, and Bea—three steps ahead, the way she’d been since they got off the plane—stopped.
“That’s her.”
A woman at the railing past security—long gray hair half up, half down, a linen shirt the color of unbleached paper, a turquoise pendant on a leather cord, reading glasses pushed up into the hair. She was watching the gate, then watching Bea, and her whole face opened.
“Bea,” Sam said.
She came around the railing with her hands out. Bea went into them and Sam held her—longer than Stella expected. One hand on the back of Bea’s head. Saying something into Bea’s hair that Stella couldn’t hear.
Stella stayed back with the bags.
When Sam let Bea go and held her at arm’s length and laughed once—surprised, delighted—and pushed Bea’s hair behind her ear, Sam’s eyes moved past Bea and found Stella.
A half-second of something crossed her face. Not unwelcome—just unplanned. As if Tyler’s phone call had told her the facts and her brain had filed them but her body hadn’t quite prepared for a second girl standing there with a camera bag.
