Chapter 1

Elise Ward was sitting at Mara's table.

Not near it. Not waiting beside it. She occupied the corner booth at Cedar & Finch with the kind of quiet certainty that came from having been expected. Daniel's Sunday paper was folded by her elbow. In front of her sat Mara's usual coffee: oat milk, one spoonful of sugar, cooling beneath a white ceramic lid.

Mara stopped just inside the door, her weekly notebook tucked under one arm. Twenty-two years of Sundays had taught her the small geography of that booth: Daniel facing the window, Mara facing the chalkboard menu, their grocery list between them. They had made decisions there when the children were small, when his mother was ill, when neither of them could afford more than one breakfast out each month.

Elise looked up with relief. "Oh. You must be Mara. Daniel said you liked this table."

Before Mara could answer, Daniel came in from the street carrying two cinnamon rolls. His coat was damp at the shoulders. He saw Mara, then Elise, and the smile he had brought through the door altered too late.

"I thought you were meeting Nina," he said.

"That is this afternoon." Mara set her notebook on the empty chair opposite him. "I thought I was meeting you."

Elise gathered her bag. "I can go. I only came because Daniel offered to walk me through the neighborhood. I have another viewing at ten."

"You don't have to run off," Daniel said quickly. "Mara knows you've had a rough few months."

It was the way he said it that hurt most. Not as a question to Mara, or an apology. As though understanding was a role she had already been assigned.

Mara looked at the coffee he had ordered for her, then at the coffee Elise had already been drinking from. "Does she know what I take?"

Daniel blinked. "It came up."

"A lot comes up on Sunday mornings, apparently."

Elise's face tightened. She was not smug. That made the scene worse, not better. She looked like a woman who had been offered shelter and had not thought to ask who was standing outside in the rain.

Daniel lowered his voice. "She is scared about buying after the divorce. I was helping. It isn't a thing."

Mara took her notebook from the chair. "Then you don't need me to make it into one."

She turned before he could explain the difference between help and habit. Outside, the air smelled of wet pavement and burnt toast. She cancelled the grocery order on her phone, then sent Nina a message: I can still drive you to class this afternoon. I can't organize dinner afterward.

Her thumb shook only once.

Standing beneath the café awning, she opened her notebook and uncapped her pen. Beneath the neat, unblemished list of household chores, she added a single line in her precise, even script:

Sunday coffee: replaced. Grocery order: cancelled.

She closed the book without waiting for the ink to dry. No exclamation marks, no bitter margin notes to herself. Just the cold filing of a fact.

Behind her, through the café window, Daniel was still standing between the booth and the door. Elise was saying something she could not hear. Daniel glanced toward Mara's empty chair as if it had been moved without his permission.