“How’s the game?” he asked.
“Michigan’s up by six.” She grabbed a piece of toast and scraped the black parts off over the sink. “And Margo’s wearing the sweatshirt.”
Tyler’s hand stopped on the butter knife. He didn’t say anything for a second.
“Good,” he said.
“Yeah.” Stella bit into the toast. “Really good.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
She came at four. Not at three-fifteen—that was Wednesdays. Sundays she came at four, after the Shack closed, after the grill was cleaned and the apron hung and the walk home that had become the walk to Bernie’s house instead, a lot of days.
She let herself in. The door was unlocked, which it always was on the days she came because he’d started leaving it unlocked for her, which was a thing neither of them discussed.
He was in the kitchen reading the Sunday paper, which he still got delivered because he believed news should arrive on paper and be read with coffee and folded in quarters when you were done. He’d stopped going to the Shack every day—not because the knee couldn’t make it, but because the kitchen table had become the better booth. Two mugs on the table. He’d made hers.
“You’re early,” he said without looking up.
“I’m on time.”
“Four-twelve is early.”
“Four-twelve is on time.”
“You used to come at four-fifteen.”
“I walk faster now.”
He folded the paper and set it aside. She sat down across from him and picked up the mug. He’d gotten the temperature right again, which was an adjustment she was making slowly and without grace.
They drank their tea. The Sanders jar was on the counter next to the stove—it had migrated from behind the ice cube trays to the counter sometime in the last two weeks, which meant it was no longer being saved. It was being used.
“I want to show you something,” she said.
He looked at her over his mug.
“Come with me,” she said, and stood.
She walked to the hallway, the one between the kitchen and the bathroom. The one with the photos.
She’d seen them the first time she’d come to his house—the day of the soup, the day she’d put the hand towel on the rack and stopped in the hallway because the frames were arranged and the faces in them were people she didn’t know and one she did. But she hadn’t asked about them.
She stood in front of the wall. Bernie came and stood beside her.
“Tell me about them,” she said.
He was quiet for a moment. Then he reached up and touched the frame of the first photograph—two boys in matching shirts at what looked like a beach in the 1950s.
“That’s me and my brother,” he said. “Huntington Beach. I was eight. He was six. My mother took it with a camera she’d won in a church raffle.” His hand moved to the next frame. “That’s David—his boy. Wedding day, ninety-four. I wore a tuxedo. I looked like a waiter.”
“You probably did.”
“I’ve never claimed otherwise.”
She pointed at the black-and-white shot of the shaggy dog on the porch.
“Walter,” he said. “Named after my uncle, which my uncle did not appreciate. Walter lived fourteen years and never once came when called. My brother said he had principles.”
