Chapter 2

The copper handle left a red groove across my palm before I reached the house. I set the pan on our kitchen table, where Casper usually dropped the keys after closing.

He came in twenty minutes later with his apron still tied. A smear of custard marked one cuff, and he carried the seating cards under his arm.

"Only this year?"

Casper stopped beside the chair across from me. His eyes moved from my face to the copper pan, then back again.

"That's the arrangement."

I kept my hand on the table. "Whose arrangement?" He pulled out the chair but remained standing behind it.

"Ilse just got back. She needs somewhere to get established."

I pressed my thumb into the groove in my palm. For twenty-three years, I had roasted fish while Casper remembered birthdays and refilled glasses before anyone asked. He had carried chairs into the street during summer dinners and polished them again afterward.

I touched the edge of our card. "My dinner." Casper answered without looking up. "One dinner."

The words landed lightly in his mouth. He began sorting the seating cards into their usual stacks, couples together, widows near friends, Marsh away from the kitchen door.

"One year," I said.

"Yes."

My nail caught on the table seam. "Here?" His hands paused over the card bearing our name. The silver border had been his choice, ordered because twenty-five years deserved something better than plain cream.

He had an answer ready in the careful shape of his mouth. Ilse needed familiar faces. The chamber wanted a simple change. Our regulars would return next year. He aligned the corners while the reasons accumulated between us, each one smooth enough to serve.

"It helps everyone," he said.

My throat would not close around the laugh that tried to rise. He believed he had moved one evening across town, like shifting Boyd closer to the window when his hearing worsened. In Casper's hands, my place had become a courtesy he could extend.

I lifted the pan and turned it over. A dark ring covered the bottom, burnished by years of heat and salt. Casper watched my fingers follow the rim, checking the small looseness near the handle as I did after every service.

"Will you cook there?"

"Ilse has her own kitchen."

"That's not an answer."

He rubbed the custard from his cuff with one damp fingertip. His silence lasted long enough for me to picture him at her door, greeting people whose coats he had hung in my dining room for decades.

"She'll need help at first."

The pan settled against my hip. I had expected greed, or anger, or even an old hunger he was too ashamed to name. This was worse. Casper was being considerate. He had measured the hurt, divided it into twelve months, and decided I could carry it.

I walked to the cupboard and took down the padded case I used when the pan needed repair. The zipper caught at one corner. I worked it free without looking at him.

"Where are you taking that?"

"To bed."

He almost smiled, waiting for me to make the joke kinder. I closed the case and held it against my chest until his mouth flattened.

Casper gathered the remaining cards. On top lay the seating chart, my chair crossed out in blue pencil and Ilse's name written beside his. He folded it twice, carefully, and slipped it into his apron pocket.