Page 28

The bet ended before the dye house, I'd have paid it to Margaret ten times over, I've never in my life been less interested in winning. It's all true and I can see, with terrible clarity, that she'll hear every word of it as the sound of a man managing a problem.

I could say the other thing too. The three words I've been holding under my tongue since 2 a.m. in her bed. I could say them right now, in her kitchen, in the cold light, and they'd land exactly as what they are, which is a man reaching for the nearest lever.

I don't say them.

"Roman," says Rosey. Her voice is very small and very clear. "Go."

I should stay. Every instinct I have screams it. I should say her name and cross the kitchen and put my hands on her shoulders and not leave until she believes me. I should call Margaret back and ask her to put it in writing that the bet was a joke. I should fix this.

I've fixed eleven companies in twelve years and I've never once met a broken thing I couldn't take apart on a table. My body leans, a half-inch, toward her. I can feel the plan forming in my chest, the whole shape of it, step one, step two.

She sees it. I watch her see it.

"I asked you to go," she says. "I'm not asking twice."

And I understand, standing in her kitchen with the skillet ticking and a burned pancake smoking in the pan, that this is the whole thing, the entire test. Not whether I can build a plan but whether I can lose one. Whether I can hear no from someone I want more than I've ever wanted anything and actually, honestly, go.

"All right," I say.

My voice is steady and I don't know where I find it. I put the dish towel down on the counter. I take my jacket off the hook by the door, and my shoes, and I stand there a moment with them in my hand and I look at her. She's holding the other towel and she isn't crying. She looks like she's been carved out of something.

"For what it's worth," I say, "the honey's on the side."

She turns her face away.

I put on my shoes on her porch. The cold hits like a slap, bright and clean, with the smell of woodsmoke still hanging in the air from last night.

Across the street a man's raking leaves. A church bell begins to ring three blocks over, slow and heavy, and doors open up and down Linden, and people start to come out in their good coats with plaid scarves wound around their necks and casserole dishes in their hands. Someone waves.

I lift a hand. I walk down the steps and onto the sidewalk and I do not look back at the yellow door, and with every step I'm already drafting.

Flowers, says the part of my head that has never once stopped working. Mae will know which. A note, something plain. Then wait for her to come to you, because pressure will—

I stop on the sidewalk and stand there with my hands in my pockets and the bell ringing.

I'm doing it. I'm drafting an apology like a restructuring plan, in phases, with a timeline, and I can hear exactly what she would hear. You don't love me. You love fixing me. It lands in my chest like a thrown stone and it's right, and for a minute I can't move.

I'm not going to send flowers.

I'm not going to text her either, though the phone is a live coal in my pocket, and I'm not going to wait on her porch. I'm going to do the one thing I've never done in thirty-six years of being very good at things. I'm going to leave the problem exactly where she's put it and go and be useful somewhere else.

I think, absurdly, of the cinnamon roll. You can have one tomorrow, if there's extras. I'm not going to get a cinnamon roll. It's the stupidest thing in the world to mourn and I stand on a sidewalk in Bloomfield, mourning it.

Then I go to work.

The mill is silent on Sundays. I let myself in through the side door with the visitor card the front office gave me on Friday and climb the forty-two stairs, counting them for the first time.

The conference room is cold and bright. The glass runs the length of the room and beneath it the weaving floor lies dark and still, the Drapers asleep in their long rows.

Down on the Green, through a far window, I can see the last of the festival coming down, the hay bales stacked on a flatbed, a man on a ladder unhooking paper lanterns one at a time. It's a clear, windless, golden morning and the whole town looks like a painting of itself.

I call Margaret from the window. She picks up on the first ring.

"You hung up on me."

"I did. I'm sorry." I'm not, quite. "Margaret, I'm not sending a list."

There's a silence. Then, evenly, "I beg your pardon."