Before the Rain Stopped

By the end of the month, Tessa no longer left the room when Damian came in.

Sometimes she stayed because his mother wanted her there. Sometimes she stayed because a conversation had not finished.

He learned that she hated carnations, liked the first snow until it touched the road, and had once tried to repair her own alternator with a video paused on her phone.

"The mechanic asked whether someone had attacked the engine," she told Beatrice.

"Did they?" Damian asked.

"You weren't invited to this conversation."

His mother laughed.

He would have bought the entire ruined car to hear that sound again.

Tessa learned things about him, too. He took his coffee without sugar but ate the caramel candies his mother left in a dish. He could mend a loose button because Beatrice had insisted he learn at thirteen. He never sat with his back to a door.

"That must make restaurants exhausting," she said.

"Not for me."

She looked at him over her mug. "For the person choosing your table?"

"Usually."

She shook her head, but she was smiling.

On a Thursday in early November, the weather worsened before sunset.

Wind drove water across the coast road. Anthony reported debris near the lower gate, and Mrs. Alvarez began arranging rooms for the staff who could not safely leave.

Damian found Tessa by the front windows holding her phone.

"Shuttle's suspended," she said. "I saw the notice."

"The west road may stay open. Paul is checking."

"I'd rather wait than put somebody on the road for me."

"There's a guest room. Mrs. Alvarez has keys."

She watched the branches bend outside.

"All right. I'll call the diner. I'm supposed to open tomorrow."

It was an ordinary decision, sensibly made. Damian spent the next hour aware of her presence in the house with a concentration he could barely conceal.

He was halfway through an unpleasant call when she passed the library wearing borrowed sweatpants and an oversized sweater.

The man on the phone threatened to take his business elsewhere.

"Then take it," Damian said, and hung up.

Tessa stopped.

"I hope that wasn't about the electricity bill."

He gestured to the fireplace.

"Come in."

She looked at the book in her hand, then entered.

The library had belonged to Beatrice before the stairs became difficult. There were photographs on the shelves and worn places on the arms of her favorite chair. Damian had preserved it so carefully that he rarely used it.

Tessa settled on the sofa instead.

"Tea?" he asked.

"If you're making it."

"You don't trust me with tea?"

"I've seen your coffee machine relationship."

He brought the tray himself.

She tucked her feet under her. The sweater slipped off one shoulder, revealing the thin strap of a tank top. He looked at her face deliberately.

She noticed that, too.

"You can sit down," she said.

He sat at the other end of the sofa.

For a while the rain did most of the talking.

Then she picked up a photograph from the low table. Damian at perhaps eight, his mother beside him on a beach, his father just visible at the edge.

"You had a dog."

"A terrible one. He bit a judge."

Tessa's eyes widened.

"My mother said the judge deserved it."

She laughed softly and set the picture down.

"Emily wanted a dog. We couldn't have one in the apartment. I kept telling her we'd get a better place when she got well."

Damian looked at her hands around the mug.

"What would you have called it?"

She blinked at him.

"Toast."

"That's a terrible name."

"She said it would be impossible to sound angry shouting it in a park."

He imagined Tessa calling for a dog across wet grass. Her sister alive beside her. A life with no connection to him at all.

"She might have had a point."

Tessa's smile wavered.

"I kept her coat for six months. It was hanging on the back of the bathroom door. I'd walk past it and think she'd come over. Just for a second. Then I'd remember."

He said nothing. There were answers he could give men for losses. Money. Retribution. A body. None belonged here.

"I finally put it in a box," she continued. "Then I cried because the door looked wrong."

He reached for her mug when her hands began to shake. She let him take it.

"That sounds lonely," he said.

She looked at him sharply, then away.

"It was."

He set the mug down and remained where he was.

After a minute she asked, "Why didn't you go into your mother's room? Before?"

The fire shifted in the grate.

"I did."

She waited.

He could feel how easily he might retreat behind the shape of that answer. He had visited. He had paid. His employees had seen him come and go.

"When she stopped knowing me, I started leaving sooner. I told myself she preferred the nurses."

Tessa moved a little closer.

"Sometimes she does," she said gently.

He gave a brief, humorless laugh.

"I know."

"That doesn't mean you don't matter."

He looked toward the photograph.

"She used to know when something was wrong before I spoke. I hated it when I was young. Then she started asking who I was, and I wanted to tell her everything."

His voice roughened. He stopped.

Tessa put her hand on his forearm.

He looked down at it. Her palm was almost healed. A thin pink line crossed the place where the bandage had been.

He turned his arm and caught her hand.

She did not pull away.

"I shouldn't have watched you," he said.

"No."

"I know."

She studied his face. He lifted her hand and pressed his mouth to the scar.

The movement changed the room.

Her breath caught. He heard it clearly over the rain.

"Tessa."

"I know who you are," she whispered.

He looked up.

"Not everything," he said.

"Enough to know I ought to be more sensible."

He moved closer slowly. She set her other hand against his chest, over the hard beat beneath his shirt, and for a moment he could not tell whether she meant to stop him.

Then she leaned toward him.

The first kiss was careful only until she caught his collar.

He had imagined this. He was ashamed of how often. None of those private, controlled thoughts had prepared him for the warmth of her mouth or the small sound she made when he drew her nearer.

He put his hand at her waist. She moved onto the cushion beside him, her knee against his thigh, and kissed him again with a hunger that undid the last of his composure.

When he finally lifted his head, her fingers were still tangled in his shirt.

"Tell me to stop," he said, "if you want me to."

"I don't want you to stop kissing me."

He brushed his thumb along her jaw.

"But?"

She swallowed.

"But tomorrow, you can't decide this means you get to arrange the rest of my life."

He wanted to promise her anything. That was part of the danger, and he knew it.

"I want to see you tomorrow," he said instead.

Her mouth softened.

"You will. I work here."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know."

She kissed him once more, slower this time, then rested her forehead against his.

Later he walked her to the guest room. He stopped outside the door while she found the key in the borrowed sweater's pocket.

She looked back at him.

"Good night, Damian."

He touched her cheek.

"Good night."

She went inside. He remained in the hall until he heard her move away from the door, then went downstairs to a library where two mugs had gone cold beside the fire.