We did not fix everything that night.
That would have been suspicious.
Grand repairs belonged to bad contracts and worse men. Real repair, I was learning, looked less like a declaration and more like two people arguing for twenty minutes about where a coat could be placed without making the room feel occupied.
Silas did not move into my apartment.
My apartment would not have survived him.
Neither, probably, would the table.
He stayed two nights that week. Then three the next. Some mornings he left before I woke because I asked him to. Some mornings he stayed because I asked him to. Once, he asked whether I wanted him to stay and I said I did not know.
He did not translate that into yes.
He did not translate it into no.
He made tea and waited while I found the sentence.
That was n
