Margaret Thornbury's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Three days after Theo signed the deed, the house felt too quiet. Margaret had a partner now, but partners did not knock. He had settled into his own life across town, and she had no reason to call him back. She was sorting a box of odds and ends when she found it — a tarnished silver cufflink under a folded napkin. Theo's. It must have slipped off his sleeve at supper. She turned it in her hand. Here was a reason to see him again. But she did not trust herself to just drop it in the mail. The last time a man stood close, she had folded up and gone quiet. She needed her nerve first. So she drove to the mechanic's shop to have her rattling engine checked, and to sit somewhere that was not her empty kitchen. Luca Devereaux worked under a raised hood, a wiry man in a grease-stained jacket. He was the mechanic everyone on the block talked about — the one who charged rich neighbors full price and fixed poor mothers' cars for nothing. He wiped his hands and looked at her engine, not at her. "Belt's worn," he said. "Twenty minutes." Margaret held up the cufflink without meaning to. "I need to give this back to someone. I keep talking myself out of it." Luca glanced at it. Then at her. "Then don't mail it." He turned back to the engine. "Mailing it says stay away." She stared at him. "You barely looked." "Didn't need to." He tightened a bolt. "You drove across town to ask a stranger permission. That's your answer." The words landed hard because they were true. She had done exactly that. She thanked him, paid full price though he tried to wave half of it off, and drove home with her heart loud. At her table she did not reach for an envelope. She picked up the phone. Her hand shook. The old urge rose — hang up, wait, let it settle. She pressed the phone to her ear instead. Theo answered on the third ring. "Margaret?" "You left something here," she said. "A silver cufflink. Under a napkin." She breathed. "I could mail it. But I'd rather you came to supper and got it yourself." A pause. She heard him shift. "That's not partnership business," he said. "No," she said. "It isn't." Another pause, longer. Then, flat and careful: "Friday. I'll come Friday." Margaret set the phone down. Her dog lifted its head from the empty side of the bed. She had not folded. She had not gone quiet. She had asked for the thing she wanted, out loud, and he had said yes. Friday was three days away. She still did not know if a man who counted money could be a man who spun her. But she had given herself the chance to find out.