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The light off the water caught his face the way it caught everything at the end of the evening — sideways, making the lines of his face clearer than the day did. She’d been careful not to look at him directly since they stopped. She was being careful right now.
This isn’t a debrief. It hasn’t been one since approximately the performance review joke.
I am absolutely not doing anything about that.
The almost-moment stretched. The ocean moved instead, a slow swell pushing in from somewhere farther out, and the water near the pilings shifted in temperature in a way she could feel from the railing — a degree warmer, then settling. The ward lines under the dock were quiet. Whatever the water was responding to, it wasn’t the ward infrastructure.
She looked at her hands on the rail. His were six inches to the right.
The ocean moved back.
He did not move away from the rail.
Neither did she.
The cross-current below them shifted again. She watched it without pointing it out. He did the same. The ocean was not subtle, and neither of them acknowledged it, which was the most accurate summary of the evening she could have written.
His hands were on the railing. Large and unhurried, the knuckles were worn from work she’d only seen the results of. She knew about the radios. She did not need to think further than that, yet she was thinking considerably further.
Somewhere along the boardwalk, a vendor’s radio played a song with a brass section. The ocean kept doing its business—a gull called once from the dark above the waterline and didn’t call again.
She stepped back from the railing.
“If you tell anyone I enjoyed this,” she said, turning back toward the lit end of the boardwalk, “I will deny it all, and I’m a much better liar than I look.”
She heard him step away from the rail. His footsteps were even behind her, steady, at the same pace he kept on the cliff path.
Then —she was not looking, facing forward, catching it only in her peripheral vision, the sort of thing you weren’t supposed to see — he almost smiled.
She faced forward and walked.
The warmth in her palms, which had been so quiet all evening, flickered once — warm and steady, then quiet again.
She added this to the list.
The list was getting long.
The bookstore light was on when she turned onto the side street, and it wasn’t only Valene’s light. A second lamp burned in the reading corner, the one Valene lit whenever something was going on.
Althea pushed through the door. Valene was at the counter, holding tea. Gerri Wilder was in the reading chair, a tin of cookies on her knee, looking like she’d been there for twenty minutes and had no intention of explaining why.
Gerri looked up from the reading chair, clearly expecting exactly this person and pleased that the timing worked out. “There you are.”
Althea looked at her. She looked at Valene. Valene’s face said I didn’t invite her. She was already here when I got downstairs.
“Cookie?” Gerri held out the tin.
Althea took a cookie.
“I went for a walk.”
“I know.” Gerri glanced at her face. “Hmm. Good.” She stood and tucked the cookie tin under her arm. “The lemon-zest ones are on the counter. They’re for when things have gone well enough to be terrifying.” She moved toward the door. “Which is tonight, apparently. Goodnight.”
“How did you know to bring two kinds of cookies?”
Gerri stopped with her hand on the doorframe, entirely unruffled at being caught. “I brought the kind I had. You’re the one reading into the number.” She opened the door. “Go to bed. You’ll want to remember tonight clearly.”
The door closed behind her, the bell above it settling. Althea let it go, since arguing with Gerri took more energy than she had. Valene and Althea stood in the shop’s quiet.
