She went to get it. She was aware, in the abstract, that she should have been watching him. That this was prime investigative territory. That Oliver, after a long night, was Oliver with his guard down. That if he were going to let something slip about letters and feelings and the contents of his doorstep, this was exactly the kind of unguarded arrival in which it might happen.
She got the box set from the back room and brought it out and set it on the counter in front of him. She was thinking about whether Freddie's copy of whatever he was currently reading was still turned face-down on the shelf at the back of the cart, and whether she'd ever actually seen him take a book out, and the specific way he'd held her hand for a few seconds in the lamplight of the shop like he was making a promise he wasn't yet certain he could keep.
"These are beautiful," Oliver said, turning the box in his hands.
"Aren't they?" Wren came back to herself. "The textile covers are new. Fitzgerald approved them herself, apparently."
"Incredible career." Oliver set the box down and looked at her with the mild, comfortable attention of a man who genuinely liked the person he was talking to. "How are you?"
"I didn't sleep particularly well."
"Store running you ragged?"
"Something like that."
He nodded, accepting this.
He never talks about himself. He seems to know a lot about you.
Wren rang up the Fitzgerald. Oliver paid, tucked the box under his arm, and said he was heading to the office, that he'd be buried in it until evening. He said goodbye to Bea, who was shelving in the back, and pushed out into the morning.
The door closed.
Outside, through the window, a figure in a slate-gray jacket moved behind the cart counter, precise and unhurried, handing a cup to someone Wren didn't recognize. Freddie didn't look up.
She found that she was thinking about Oliver. Not about Oliver's hands, or Oliver's visits, or the evidence board in the back room with its Post-its and its circumstantial threads. About one word, said quietly, in a voice she had come to know the register of. About the specific weight of both arms, and cedarwood and espresso, and a man who had walked on the street side of the pavement without being asked.
She picked up the Mary Oliver from the display where she'd set it down.
She found, for the first time in weeks, that the shape of her mystery admirer in her mind was slightly—not gone. Not gone at all. But less vivid than it had been this morning, the outlinessoftened, like a drawing in the rain. Like something that was not disappearing but was being gently and persistently displaced.
She couldn't have explained why.
She put the book in its correct place. She could see it now: the right place, the display suddenly making sense in a way it hadn't all morning. She stood back and looked at it.
"Better," Bea said from behind her.
"Yes," Wren said.
She looked out of the window. At the cart. At the navy awning and the chalk board with the blocky letters and the broad shoulders of the man behind the counter who was not looking at her and who, she was realizing, had never needed to look directly at her to prove he was paying attention.
