Chapter Nine: "Minimum"

ZARA

Sunday, 8:06am

Three weeks.

She'd counted them that morning without meaning to. Standing in the bathroom brushing her teeth with a toothbrush she'd bought at the pharmacy on the corner because she hadn't planned to stay this long. She looked at herself in the mirror and thought: three weeks.

The contract said three weeks minimum.

Nobody had said anything about minimum in a while.

She rinsed. Put the toothbrush back in the glass beside the sink. Her glass. She had a glass now. A drawer in the bathroom. A hook on the back of the bedroom door. A spot on the kitchen counter where she kept her sketchbooks because the light there in the morning was good.

She hadn't planned any of that either.

She came out to find the kitchen already smelling like coffee. Callum was at the island, back to her, doing something with his phone. Dark shirt, no jacket. The version of him that existed before the day required anything.

She sat at the island. He turned and put a cup in front of her without being asked.

She picked it up.

Exactly right. Always exactly right and he'd never once asked how she took it.

"You're counting," he said.

She looked up. "What."

"The weeks." He sat across from her. "You get a particular expression."

"I don't have a particular expression."

"You do." He picked up his own cup. "It's the one where you're thinking something you haven't decided to say yet."

She looked at him across the island. October light coming through the window. His amber eyes paying attention to things most people didn't bother with.

"Three weeks," she said.

"Yes."

"The contract said three weeks minimum."

"It did."

She waited. He didn't say anything else. Just drank his coffee and looked at her and waited too.

Outside the city was doing its Sunday thing. Slower. Church bells somewhere. Someone's kid on the pavement below laughing at something.

"Marguerite," she said. "Is she—"

"Stable. Good days and bad days." He paused. "She asked about you yesterday."

"What did she ask."

"Whether you were happy."

Zara looked at her cup. "What did you say."

"I said I didn't know." Simply. Without apology. "I said I hoped so."

She looked up.

He was looking at her with the expression she was starting to recognise as him being honest at some cost to himself.

"Are you," he said. "Happy."

She thought about it properly. Not the automatic answer. She thought about the coffee that was always right and the kitchen light and Morris the beagle and Mae's test results and the drawer in the bathroom and the sketchbooks on the counter.

"I don't know what to call it," she said. "But it doesn't feel like nothing."

He nodded.

They sat with that for a moment.

"Nobody's said anything," she said. "About what happens next."

"No," he said. "Nobody has."

"Are you going to."

He looked at her. Set his cup down. "Are you."

The kitchen quiet between them. The Sunday city outside. The coffee going slightly cold in both their cups.

She picked hers up. Drank it anyway.

"I have Morris at one," she said.

He almost smiled. "I know."

"And a shift Tuesday morning."

"I know that too."

She looked at him. "You looked at my schedule."

"Daniel keeps everyone's schedule. I happened to see it." A pause. "Several times."

She stared at him.

He looked back with complete composure and picked up his coffee.

She felt something move in her chest that she didn't try to name.

She stood up. Put her cup in the sink. Turned back.

"I'm not going anywhere," she said. "If that's what you're asking without asking."

He was quiet for a moment.

"I wasn't asking," he said. "But I'm glad to know."

She nodded. Went to get her jacket.

At the door she stopped.

"Callum."

He looked up.

"The coffee," she said. "You always get it exactly right. I never told you how I take it."

He looked at her steadily. "No," he said. "You didn't."

She waited.

"First morning," he said. "You made it yourself. I watched."

She stood in the doorway for a moment.

Then she left.

In the elevator going down she pressed her back against the wall and looked at the ceiling and thought about a man who watched how she made her coffee on the first morning and remembered it every single day after and never once mentioned it.

The elevator reached the lobby.

She walked out into the Sunday street.

Smiled at nothing in particular.

CALLUM

Sunday, 1:47pm

She'd been gone three hours when he called the lawyer.

He stood in the kitchen first. Looking at the spot on the counter where her sketchbooks lived. The glass by the bathroom sink. The hook on the back of the bedroom door with her good jacket on it, the one she hadn't taken because she said Morris didn't care about good jackets.

He picked up his phone. Called.

"The placement contract," he said when she answered. "I want the minimum term clause removed."

A pause. "Removed entirely."

"Yes."

"And replaced with."

He looked at the counter. The sketchbooks. The good light.

"Nothing," he said. "Leave it open."

He hung up.

His phone buzzed immediately. Daniel. Afternoon briefing ready when you are.

He typed back. Give me an hour.

Went to stand at the window.

The city below. Somewhere out there she was walking four dogs through a park, one of them ancient and slow and apparently very important to her. She'd told him about Morris at 2am on her couch with her shoes off and her hair loose and her voice warm in a way it wasn't always. She'd said: he moves at exactly his own speed and you just have to accept that. She'd laughed a little at the end.

He thought she probably wasn't only talking about the dog.

He stood at the window until he heard the front door.

ZARA

Sunday, 2:31pm

She came back with dog hair on her jacket and her cheeks cold from the wind.

Callum was in the living room. He looked up when she came in.

"Good walk?" he said.

"Morris found something extremely interesting near the east gate and spent eleven minutes investigating it." She dropped her bag. "I don't know what it was. He wasn't sharing."

He smiled. The real one. The one that started at the corners of his eyes.

She felt it land somewhere in her chest and kept moving.

She went to the kitchen. Poured water. Drank it standing at the counter.

"I called the lawyer," he said from the doorway.

She turned.

He was leaning against the door frame. Hands in his pockets. Watching her.

"The contract," he said. "I had the minimum term clause removed."

She looked at him.

"You didn't have to do that," she said.

"I know."

"I told you I wasn't going anywhere."

"I know that too." He looked at her steadily. "I wanted it gone anyway. It felt wrong. Having a term on something that's become what this has become."

She set her glass down.

The kitchen between them. The Sunday light. The sketchbooks on the counter in the spot she'd claimed without meaning to.

"What has it become," she said.

He looked at her for a long moment.

"I don't have a word for it yet," he said. "But it doesn't feel like nothing."

Her own words. From this morning. Handed back to her.

Something cracked open in her chest. Not painfully. Just open.

She looked at the sketchbooks. Then at him.

"Okay," she said quietly.

"Okay," he said.

They stood there for a moment. The city below. The kitchen light. Two people who'd started as a contract and were becoming something neither of them had a word for yet.

Then her phone rang.

Mae.

She looked at Callum. He nodded toward the phone. She answered.

"Zara." Mae's voice. Something different in it. Thicker. "The doctor called."

Zara's hand tightened on the phone.

"The new doctor," Mae said. "The one I didn't ask for. The specialist." A pause. "Baby, my results came back. They're different. They're—" Her voice broke. Just once. "They're better. So much better."

Zara turned to face the window.

The city blurred a little.

"Okay," she said. Her voice came out wrong. "Okay Mae. That's good. That's really good."

"How did you—" Mae stopped. "Was it you? Did you arrange this?"

Zara looked at Callum's reflection in the window. He was looking at his phone, not at her. Giving her the room of it.

"It doesn't matter," Zara said. "Just get better."

She hung up.

Stood at the window.

He moved. Then he was beside her. Not touching. Just there.

She turned.

He was looking at the city, not at her. His shoulder close enough to hers that she could feel it.

"Three weeks ago," she said quietly. "You did that three weeks ago."

"About that," he said.

"Before I told you anything about her."

"Yes."

She looked at his profile. The jaw. The amber eyes on the city.

"Why," she said.

He was quiet for a moment.

"Because you came into this carrying something too heavy to carry alone," he said. "And I had the ability to make it lighter. It didn't seem complicated."

She looked at him for a long time.

He turned and met her eyes.

She reached up. Put her hand against his face. Just for a second. Her palm against his cheek, warm and certain and completely unplanned.

He went very still.

She dropped her hand.

Turned back to the window.

"Thank you," she said. "For Mae."

"You don't have to thank me," he said.

"I know." She looked at the city. "I'm doing it anyway."

They stood at the window for a while. The Sunday city below. Both of them quiet. Both of them there.

Then he said: "I'll make dinner."

She turned and looked at him.

"You can't cook," she said.

"I'm aware." He moved toward the kitchen. "Come and tell me what I'm doing wrong."

She followed him.

In the kitchen doorway she stopped.

On the counter beside her sketchbooks was a small vase of white flowers.

She looked at it.

Then at him.

He was already at the fridge, back to her, pulling things out.

"They're from the market on the corner," he said. Without turning. "You mentioned once that white flowers in October make a room feel less like it's waiting for something." A pause. "I don't remember when you said it. I just remembered that you did."

She stood in the doorway.

Looked at the white flowers.

Looked at his back.

Felt something settle in her chest that had been unsettled for a very long time.

"Move over," she said. "I'll cook. You can watch."

He moved over.

She cooked.

He watched.

And that night, long after the dishes were done and the lights were low and the city had settled into its nighttime register, Callum sat in his office and opened his laptop.

His email had one new message.

No sender name. Just an address he didn't recognise.

Subject line: She's not who you think she is.

He looked at it for a long moment.

Didn't open it.

Closed the laptop.

Sat in the dark.

And thought about a woman who put her palm against his cheek for one second and then turned away like she hadn't done anything at all.