Chapter One
Shoes by the Door
Nell had put Owen's good shoes beside the door. At their age, this was practically an elopement.
He stood over them in his slippers, considering the evidence. The left shoe had been polished more thoroughly than the right. She had always begun a task with grand intentions and finished it with somewhere else to be.
"Am I expected at a funeral?"
"Certainly not your own. You'd be late."
From the kitchen came the little scrape of a chair. He found her sitting with the shoe brush in her lap, looking absurdly innocent for a woman who had placed a suitcase on the table. Her hair, white now and too fine to obey a clip for long, caught the morning at its edges. She had put on the rose cardigan with the uneven pearl buttons. He loved that cardigan. He loved that she knew.
"Breakfast first," she said.
"Before the funeral?"
"Before you become difficult."
He went to the cupboard. Reaching the cups took longer than it once had. Nell watched the suitcase rather than his hands, giving him the privacy of completing a thing. When he set her cup down, he turned its handle towards her left hand. She moved his chair out far enough for him to sit without catching his knee beneath the table.
They had performed these small negotiations for so long that neither could have said when they began. Once he had simply put cups anywhere. Once she had been able to spring up and steal his chair.
