Part 4
“I can’t give you an answer tonight,” Graham said.
Owen slipped the key into the folder’s pocket. “Then bring it home and talk to Mara. I’d rather hear no than spend the next six months arguing about hours.”
“You make it sound like I’d just stop showing up.”
“I’m asking you to look at what you can do.”
His brother left the folder. Graham took it back through the doors with him and put it in their bag, on top of the extra diapers the nurse had given them. Mara was asleep in the chair, one hand tucked beneath her cheek. He waited until she woke to tell her what Owen had said.
“I know you want it,” she said.
“I wanted it when we came in, too.”
“We hadn’t met him then.”
She looked at Ellis. Graham followed her gaze, and the baby opened his mouth in his sleep, then closed it again.
They came home Thursday afternoon. June had left dinner in their refrigerator, and Owen had brought Birdie back that morning. The dog greeted them so noisily that Ellis woke and began to fuss. Mara laughed at the speed with which Graham told Birdie to quiet down, using a whisper she had never obeyed in her life.
They put Ellis in the bassinet and let Birdie investigate from the floor. She sniffed the leg of it, the bag beneath it, and Graham’s hospital shoes. Then she sneezed, drank half her water bowl, and came back to check again.
The bedroom had been waiting without them. Graham noticed the dust on the lamp and the pair of earrings Mara had left beside it. Her work badge hung over the corner of the mirror. He took off the plastic NICU bracelet, but he couldn’t throw it away yet; he left it beside the earrings.
Mara lay down while he warmed dinner. He went upstairs three times before it was ready, bringing water, checking the baby, finding nothing that needed him. On his third visit, Mara said she would call if she wanted anything.
At the table, she opened Owen’s folder. Graham stood at the sink with his plate, waiting for her to finish. She turned back to a page she had already read and touched a line with her finger.
“This says you’ll supervise installations.”
“Some of them.”
“The ones outside the county?”
“That’s part of it.”
She closed the folder. “I wanted to go back to work after my leave.”
“You still can.”
“How?”
He started to answer and stopped. In the plans he’d made, Mara had been home with the baby while he got the new shop established. After that, they would work something out.
“I haven’t figured it out,” he said.
“I like my job. I like knowing what to do when somebody comes to my counter. I don’t want to spend every day waiting to find out what’s wrong with Ellis.”
She pressed both hands over her face, then lowered them. “I don’t mean I don’t want him.”
“I know.”
He set his plate down beside hers.
“We can talk to Owen about delaying it.”
“We can ask. But we need a plan even if he says yes.”
Ellis woke before they got further. Graham changed him while Mara prepared to feed him, and afterward they went to bed with the folder left open on the table. Neither of them slept for more than a few hours.
In the morning, Graham put on his shoes and clipped Birdie’s leash to her collar. He’d told Mara he was taking the dog around the block before going to meet Owen. The quiet outside appealed to him; he wanted a few minutes without anyone needing an answer.
Birdie reached the open front door, then turned. She pulled toward the stairs so suddenly that the leash tightened across his fingers.
“We’re going out,” he said.
She climbed two steps and looked back, waiting for him to help fetch Mara as he’d done so often before.
He called her once more. Birdie went another step, tugging him after her, and he followed because hauling her down would wake everybody. At the bedroom door, she nudged it open and went straight to Mara.
Mara sat on the edge of the bed with Ellis in her arms. A towel had fallen just beyond her feet. She was trying to hook it with one toe without jostling him.
“Could you get that?” she asked.
Graham picked it up. Ellis had milk on his chin and across the shoulder of the flannel blanket. Mara wiped him gently, and the baby complained with his eyes shut.
“Are you leaving already?”
Graham looked at the leash in his hand. Birdie leaned against Mara’s shin, having accomplished what she wanted.
“I was going to walk her first.”
“Okay.”
He took off his jacket. “No. We didn’t finish talking.”
Mara shifted Ellis against her. Graham unclipped Birdie’s leash and carried the chair over from the corner. He sat down close enough to take the towel when Mara was finished with it.
“I’d like to work three days for a while,” he said. “Here. At the old shop.”
“And the partnership?”
“I can’t run the new place on three days. Owen can’t either.”
She looked down at their son. “I don’t want you giving it up and blaming me in a year.”
“I won’t promise I won’t be disappointed.”
Mara looked back at him.
They talked while Ellis drifted to sleep. The money set aside for Graham’s share of the business was still in savings. They could use some of it to cover his shorter weeks. Mara wanted to ask her supervisor about returning gradually; they would have to arrange care together when her leave ended. June had offered one afternoon a week, and neither of them wanted to turn that into a request for five.
Mara asked whether Owen could hire another supervisor for the new shop. Graham explained the wages they’d allowed for, and she asked him to check instead of deciding the answer himself.
He called Owen with her sitting beside him. His brother listened, then said a second full-time supervisor would leave too little to pay the building costs. If Graham took the share, he’d have to do the job attached to it.
“Then we need to meet here,” Graham said. “I won’t be at the shop by nine.”
Owen arrived carrying his travel mug. He sat at their kitchen table while Mara held Ellis nearby. Birdie put her nose beneath his elbow and was ignored.
Graham opened the folder. There was his name beside his brother’s, printed in the heading on the first page. He had shown that page to Mara twice when the draft arrived. He read it once more, then turned the folder toward his brother.
“Offer it to Lena.”
Owen didn’t reach for it. “You’re sure?”
“I can give you three days. I can take the small restoration jobs. That’s what I can do now.”
His brother turned the mug by its handle. “Your pay won’t be the same on three days.”
“We’ve worked it out for the next few months,” Mara said. “We’ll have to work it out again after that.”
Owen looked between them and reached for the folder. Graham’s fingers still rested on the first page, beneath his name. He lifted his hand, and Owen took the folder and slipped the key from its pocket.
“She wants that floor plan you made,” he said. “If she buys in.”
Graham felt heat behind his eyes. He had spent a whole Sunday drawing the workbench layout, asking Mara where she’d put the windows if the building were hers.
“She can have it.”
Owen put the key away. They agreed on Graham’s first day back, and his brother drank the last of his coffee before leaving. At the door, he asked whether they needed groceries. Mara gave him a short list.
When Graham came back to the kitchen, she was touching the damp place on the blanket.
“I should wash this,” she said.
“I’ll do it.”
“Use the gentle cycle. Mom put cotton flannel in it.”
He carried it upstairs. For a moment he held it over the laundry basket, looking at the uneven corner Mara had finished. Then he loaded it into the washer with the baby’s clothes and turned the dial.
June came that afternoon. Graham heard her car before she knocked and went to the door with Ellis against his shoulder. Mara followed him from the kitchen.
June lifted a grocery bag. “I brought bread. And I’m not taking it home, so find some room.” Graham opened the door wider. “Mara wanted you to come after Ada. I told you not to. She never asked me to do that…”
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