He looked at the table. His hands. The window.
“I don’t know how,” he said.
“I just spent a week watching Sam not say things.” Stella ran her finger along the edge of her glass. “Don’t do that.”
Bernie rubbed his forehead.
“She bought you a soundbar, Bernie. Just tell her.”
He was quiet for a long time. His hands flat on the table, the cold coffee between them and the afternoon light on the booth.
“Nobody ever knows what to say,” Stella said. “That’s not a reason not to say it.”
He almost smiled.
He picked up his coffee—cold now, the surface flat—and took a sip anyway. Then he reached for his cane and eased himself out of the booth, the knee going last.
“You’re a dangerous person, Stella Walsh,” he said, standing.
“I’m a photographer. I just say what I see.”
He looked at her for a second—the way he looked at things he was going to think about later. Then he put the cane down and walked toward the door, slow and steady, the afternoon light following him across the dining room.
“Bernie?”
He turned at the door.
“Don’t run out of Wednesdays.”
He stood there with his hand on the frame—the same way he’d stood there the morning he came back, five weeks after surgery, looking at the room like he was seeing it for the firsttime. Then he nodded once and pushed through the door and was gone.
Stella sat in the booth for a minute. His coffee cup was still on the table, handle at two o’clock. She picked it up and carried it to the kitchen and washed it and set it in the rack.
She closed up alone—wiping the counter, turning off the grill, locking the register the way Anna had shown her. She pulled her phone out on the walk home.
Margo arrived at three-fifteen. The flamingo cards were on the corner of the table where she’d left them. The tally on the fridge read MARGO 14, BERNARD 9.
She let herself in and hung her coat on the hook by the door. Made the tea — two mugs, his black, hers black, from the cabinet she’d rearranged months ago. Brought them to the table. Sat down.
Bernie was in the kitchen chair. No cane. He hadn’t used the cane in weeks. He was cooking his own meals, walking to the Shack and back, going to the hardware store for things he didn’t need. She knew all of this because she’d been watching it happen, carefully and without commenting on what it meant.
He wasn’t holding the cards. He wasn’t reading his tablet. He was just sitting in the chair with his tea, watching her, and he’d been watching her since she walked in.
“No cards today?” she said.
“In a minute.”
She drank her tea. He drank his. The kitchen had the four o’clock light — the rectangle on the floor had reached the table leg, which meant they had about an hour before it moved to the wall behind the stove.
“Margo,” he said.
“Bernard.”
“I need to tell you something.”
She set her mug down.
He looked at her across the table. The tea between them. The flamingo cards on the corner. The tally on the fridge behind her that she couldn’t see from this angle but knew was there.
