Chapter 1
Perfect Strangers
The text came in at 7:02, while Sarah was still brushing her teeth.
Morning babe. Dinner with Colin and Jess tonight, 7. Wear the green dress, the one from my birthday. Love you.
She read it with the toothbrush in her mouth. Then she spat, rinsed, and read it again, as if it might say something different the second time. It did not. It was a nice message. It had a love you at the end. Anyone looking over her shoulder would have thought: what a thoughtful boyfriend, to plan ahead.
The green dress was in the back of the closet. She had worn it twice. It was a good dress, and she did not hate it. She just did not like what it did to her shoulders.
Sounds good, she typed. See you there.
She stood a moment. Then she added a heart, because without one it might look cold, and she hit send before she could think about why she was worried about that.
It was Thursday, the tenth of October. Outside her kitchen window, over the roof of the dry cleaner's, the sky was the color of a dishrag. Her apartment was on the second floor of a brick building on Pearl Street, one bedroom, with a radiator that clanked and a bathroom door that did not quite shut. She had lived there for four years. She had put up the shelves herself, badly, and painted the kitchen a yellow that was meant to be butter and had come out closer to custard. Her mother said it looked like a nursery. Sarah liked it.
She made toast. She ate half of it standing at the counter, with the crossword folded beside her plate. She did the crossword in pen, always. It was a rule she had made when she was fifteen and had never had a good reason to break. Seven across was Sound of a small mistake, six letters, and she had no idea. She wrote oops in the margin, and it did not fit, and she left it.
Her phone buzzed on the counter.
It was Mark again. Did you see my text? Wear the green one. You look amazing in it.
Saw it, she wrote. Green dress. Promise.
Good girl, he wrote, with a winking face.
She looked at that for a second longer than she meant to. It was a joke. He had a lot of those. He called her good girl the way other men said attagirl to a dog they loved. He didn't mean anything by it. She put the phone in her bag and rinsed her plate, and noticed that she had pulled her sleeve all the way down over her left hand, and let it go.
The Eastside Branch of the Ashford Public Library was a low tan building with a flat roof and a book drop shaped like a mailbox. It stood between a laundromat and a Baptist church, and on most days it smelled like carpet and warm paper. Sarah had worked there for five years. She was the children's librarian, which meant that she ran the story hour, kept the picture books in some kind of order, and answered a great many questions about where the dinosaurs were.
"There's a boy on the rug who says he's a T. rex," said Tessa, as Sarah came in. "I've told him it's a library. He says T. rexes love libraries."
"Is he right?"
"I didn't want to argue with the teeth."
Tessa Alvarez was her best friend, and the only other full-time person on the staff. She was thirty, short and round and loud, with a laugh like a dropped tray, and she was married to a man named Ben who made his own hot sauce. She had a way of looking at Sarah over the top of a coffee cup that said she had a question and was going to wait until the cup was empty to ask it.
"Mark sent bagels," said Tessa.
"What?"
"A guy came with a bag at eight-thirty. Poppy seed. Cream cheese. A note." She slid a piece of paper across the desk. It was a small white card. Thinking of you. M. "I put yours in the fridge. I ate mine. I'm not sorry."
Sarah held the card. It was a very nice thing to do. It was the kind of thing that people told stories about, at weddings, when somebody asked how the couple had stayed so close.
"He's so sweet," said Tessa. "I mean it. Ben has never sent a bagel in his life."
"Ben made you a sauce called Tessa's Revenge."
"That's different. That's love in a different language."
Sarah laughed, and put the card in her pocket. It was a true thing, the sweetness. That was what nobody understood, and what she could never explain without sounding like she was making excuses. When her father had died, two years ago in March, Mark had taken a week off work. He had picked out the flowers. He had sat in the funeral home with a pen and a list and asked the right questions in a low, kind voice, while her mother stared at the carpet and Sarah could not hold a thought. He had slept on her couch for nine nights. He had made soup that she did not eat and put it in the fridge in labeled containers.
She had not known, until then, that it was possible for another person to pick up the weight of a day and carry it for you.
She had not forgotten it. She was not sure that she ever would.
The story hour went well. There were eleven children, two grandmothers, and a baby who ate a board book. At the end of it, a small girl with a missing front tooth came up and said, very seriously, that Sarah had a nice voice and that she should be on the radio. Sarah said she would think about it.
At lunch, she checked her phone. It was a habit. She did it the way some people touch a pocket to make sure they have keys.
Two texts from Mark. One about dinner. One that said: Why aren't you answering?
It had been four minutes since the last one. She had been reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar to a baby in a bright voice.
Sorry, story hour, she wrote. All good!
Okay. Just worry when I don't hear from you.
I know. Sorry.
She looked at the apology. She had written it without thinking. It had come out on its own, as easily as thank you, and for some reason this made her stand still in the staff room with a half-eaten sandwich, holding her phone in both hands.
It's nothing, she told herself. He worries. That's not a crime.
The bagel was in the fridge. She ate it, and it was perfect.
It was a quarter past four when the little red battery light came on.
She had been driving home on Canal Street, in the blue Honda Civic that had been her father's. She had just been thinking about nothing. Then there was a small orange glow on the dashboard, and the radio coughed, and the headlights gave a long weak blink, like a tired eye.
"No," said Sarah. "Not today. Please."
The car shuddered. She steered it across two lanes, with her heart going hard, and onto the apron of a gas station, and it rolled to a stop beside a stack of motor oil as if it were glad to be finished.
She turned the key. There was a click.
She leaned her head against the wheel.
It was a thing her father would have known how to fix. He had been that kind of man. He had worn a belt with a tool pouch, even on Sundays. He would have popped the hood, and looked at it for thirty seconds with his mouth pushed out, and said, It's your alternator, Sar, in the voice of a man delivering the weather. She had never learned. She had meant to. There had always been time.
She could call Mark.
The idea came up clearly and she looked at it. He would come. He would drive across town in his gray Audi, and be calm, and be right, and tow the car himself if he had to. He would also say, in the nicest way, that this was exactly what happened when she let things go. You should've had it checked in September, babe. I told you. He had. He had told her in September.
She could not face being right about it with him.
So she did something that she was a little proud of. She got out her phone and looked up the number of Gus's Auto, on Canal, a half mile back, which had been her father's garage for twenty-six years. She told the man who answered her name. He said, "Tom Bennett's girl?" and she said yes. He said, "I'll send the truck. Twenty minutes."
It was not twenty minutes.
It was two hours and ten, and most of that she spent in the waiting room, on a molded plastic chair that had been designed by somebody who disliked backs.
It was a small room. It had a counter with a bell, a rack of old car magazines, a coffee machine that had been out of order for so long that someone had taped a sign to it that said RIP. The walls were paneled in a brown that had once been wood. A television hung in the corner from a bracket, with the sound off, and it was showing a man in a boat, in a very large hat, holding a fish.
There was one other person in the room.
He was a tall man in a gray hooded sweatshirt and a pair of worn jeans, with a mop of brown hair that had been cut by someone in a hurry. He was standing in front of the vending machine with one hand flat against its side. He was talking to it. It was not a loud voice, and it was not angry. It was a patient, reasonable, slightly hurt voice, the kind a person uses on a child who has taken a toy.
"I gave you a dollar," he said. "I gave you a dollar, and you've been holding it for a minute. I don't think that's right."
The machine said nothing. A bag of pretzels hung from its spiral, a half inch from the edge.
"Okay," said the man. "I'm going to ask nicely one more time."
He bumped it with the heel of his hand. The pretzels swung and did not fall.
Sarah, who had been trying very hard not to watch, made a small noise through her nose.
He turned.
He had a pleasant face. It was not handsome in any way you would remember. He had a long nose, and a wide mouth, and a pair of brown eyes with lines at the corners, as if he laughed more than he thought. There was a smear of grease across the knuckles of his right hand. He looked at her, caught, for about a second, and then he grinned, a sheepish crooked grin.
"You didn't see that," he said.
"I didn't."
"There's no sign. It doesn't say you can't hit it."
"There's a sign on the coffee machine."
"That one's dead. That one has had its funeral." He looked at the pretzels. "This one's alive. You can tell. It's got a, there's a look."
"Maybe it's shy."
"It's holding my dollar."
"I'm just saying. It might need a moment."
He considered that. Then he came and sat down in the other plastic chair, a few feet from hers, with a heavy creak, and stretched his legs out in front of him. He looked at the television. The man in the boat had let go of the fish, which hung in the air for a second, and swam off.
"That's an unhappy fish," he said.
"They always are."
"Are they?"
"Look at its face. It's never once looked pleased. Not in any fishing show I've seen." She heard herself. She was talking to a stranger about fish. "My dad used to watch them. He said the fish had a good deal on its mind."
"Did he fish?"
"No. He just liked the hats."
He laughed. It was a surprised one, short, from the chest, and it seemed to catch him off guard. He ran a hand through his hair and looked at her sideways, and something in his face shifted a little, as though he had meant to say a polite thing and had thought better of it.
"That's a good reason," he said.
"It's the only one he ever gave."
They did not talk for a while after that, which was strange, because it did not feel like a silence. It felt like the end of a paragraph.
Sarah took her crossword out of her bag. She had been carrying it around all day. She looked at oops, which still did not fit. Behind her the bell on the counter rang, and a mechanic in blue overalls came out and said something to the man at the register. A phone rang in the back. Outside, through the dusty window, a tow truck went past with a green sedan on its hook.
The man next to her sighed.
"What?" said Sarah.
"Nothing. I'm hungry. I had lunch at ten-forty. I teach, we eat at, it's a, there's a schedule." He rubbed his stomach. "And I just gave my last dollar to a robot."
She hesitated.
She had a pack of crackers in her bag. She kept one there for the story hour, because there was always a child who forgot to eat and then fell apart in the middle of Goodnight Moon. They were plain, salted, in a clear sleeve. She took them out and looked at them.
It was nothing. It was a pack of crackers.
She opened it, took four, and held out the rest across the gap between the chairs, without looking at him.
He looked at the sleeve. He looked at her. For a second, he did not say anything, and she felt, to her own surprise, her ears start to go warm.
"You don't have to," he said.
"I've got four."
"That's very, thank you. That's really, that's kind." He took them, carefully, with two fingers, as if they might be hot. "I'm Daniel, by the way."
"I know. They called you at the counter."
"Did they?"
"A man said Daniel, your brakes, about an hour ago. You didn't hear. You were negotiating."
"Oh," said Daniel. "Right." He ate a cracker. "And you are?"
She was about to say. She had the name ready. And then her phone rang in her hand, and the screen lit with a photograph, a man in a navy blazer, smiling, with his arm round her at somebody's wedding, and the word Mark.
"Sorry," she said. "I have to."
"Of course."
She stood, and turned toward the window, and answered.
"Hey."
"Where are you?" said Mark. It was a quiet voice. It was a perfectly polite one. "I called the library. Tessa said you left at four."
"I'm at Gus's. The car died. It's the alternator, I think. I'm fine, I just."
"You're at Gus's."
"Yes."
"Why didn't you call me?"
"I didn't want to bother you."
"Babe." There was a small sigh, tender, almost amused. "It's not a bother. I'd have come. I'd have taken care of it."
"I know."
"I'd have just come. You know that. Instead you're sitting in some garage on the, with who knows who. It's, I worry." He paused. "You've got your phone on? The location's on?"
"It's on."
"Okay. Good. Good girl. When will you be done?"
"They said twenty minutes."
"They always say that."
"I know."
"Don't be late for dinner. Colin's wife is, Jess is so, she gets so, you know. Seven sharp. Wear the green one."
"I'll wear it."
"I love you."
"I love you too," said Sarah.
She said it in the right voice. She was good at it. She hung up, and stood for a moment with the phone against her chest, looking at the dusty window, in which she could see a small pale woman in a blue coat, with a long brown braid, pulling her sleeve down over her hand.
She did it again. She tucked her hair behind her left ear.
When she turned round, Daniel was looking at the television with great attention. He was watching a man in a hat catch a very small fish. He did not look at her. He had not heard a thing, she thought, or if he had, he had decided not to. She felt, in the pit of her stomach, a quick small flash of gratitude, and under it something else, which she did not stop to name.
Gus came out at ten to seven.
He was a huge, slow, gray man in coveralls with GUS sewn on the pocket, and a look of general sorrow, like a bloodhound. He wiped his hands on a rag. "Daniel," he said. "You're done. It was the pads. And the, there was a thing with the line. I've put a new one in."
"Thank you, Gus."
"Don't thank me, it's two-eighty."
"That's, okay. Yes." Daniel stood. He took a card out of his wallet, and paid at the counter, and shrugged into a canvas jacket that hung on the back of his chair. He seemed taller standing. He had a bike helmet clipped to his bag, she noticed, with a sticker of a cartoon bee on the side. "Well. That's me."
"Good luck with the brakes," said Sarah.
He looked at her.
It lasted about a second. He had one hand on the strap of his bag, and he seemed, for a moment, to be about to say something larger, and then he did what she would come to know was typical of him, and made a joke instead.
"Good luck with the, with the Honda," he said. "May it be a, may it be a long and happy life."
"It's a Civic."
"I'm sorry. May it be a long and happy Civic."
"Thank you."
"Thanks for the crackers."
"Thanks for the fish."
He gave a small, crooked half salute. He went out. The glass door swung shut behind him, with the bell, and she saw him cross the lot, under the yellow lights, with his shoulders a little hunched against the wind, and get into a battered green Subaru with a ladder rack. It started on the third try. It pulled away.
She sat down.
"Sarah?" said Gus, from the counter.
"Yes."
"It's the alternator. I'll need another hour."
"I thought you said twenty minutes."
"I said twenty minutes to send the truck," said Gus, with dignity. "I never said anything about fixing it."
She was late for dinner.
It was not a long dinner, and she was not very late. She walked in at 7:25 in the green dress, with her hair down, and the restaurant was warm and full of candles, and Mark stood up and pulled out her chair. He kissed her cheek. He said, in front of Colin and Jess, that she was a hero for sorting out her own car. She laughed, and said it was nothing. Under the table, where nobody could see, he squeezed her knee hard enough to hurt.
It was a very small hurt. It was the kind you could pretend not to have felt.
She spent most of the evening agreeing. Colin had a story about a yacht. Jess had a story about a cousin's wedding. Mark told the one about the time Sarah had locked herself out of her own apartment in a bathrobe, and everyone laughed, and Sarah laughed too, a little late, a little loud, a moment after she had checked his face.
She drove home alone in the Civic, which ran like new, with a fresh alternator and a bill she had not looked at. She opened the windows halfway. The air was cold, and smelled of leaves.
She was thinking about a muted fishing show.
It was a ridiculous thing to think about. She knew that. She tried to push it away, and it came back. It was only that, somewhere around five o'clock, in a room that smelled of old coffee and rubber, she had laughed. A real one, not a polite one, the kind that is out before you decide. She had laughed at a joke about a fish, and it had been completely her own, and she had not looked first to see if it was allowed.
She could not remember when she had last done that.
She turned onto Pearl Street, and parked, and sat for a minute in the dark with the engine ticking. Upstairs, in her kitchen, the light was on. She had left it on that morning. She had left the crossword on the counter, with oops in the margin, six letters that did not fit.
Sound of a small mistake, she thought.
She did not go inside at once.
She got out, and locked the car, and stood on the sidewalk in the cold with her keys in her hand, looking up at her own window. It was an ordinary window. It had a yellow wall behind it, and a plant on the sill. It looked, from the street, like the home of somebody who was perfectly all right.
Daniel, she thought. His name was Daniel.
She would not see him again for two weeks.
She would forget about him, very nearly. It would be a thing that she remembered, now and then, on a bad afternoon, as one remembers a stranger's kindness on a train. A man who talked to a vending machine. A paper sleeve of crackers. That was all.
She went in.