Richard calloway's pov:
Richard Calloway had not thrown the piece of paper away.
He had thought about it several times standing at the kitchen drawer with his hand on the handle, telling himself it was nothing, telling himself he was a grieving man with too much time and too little sleep reading meaning into things that had no meaning. He had thought about it and each time he had closed the drawer and walked away and left it there.
Just a piece of paper.
Just a date and a name and three lines of his own handwriting.
Just nothing.
He made his coffee on Thursday morning the way he made it every morning with Margaret's mug, two spoons, the smell of the cofee was rising through the the small kitchen while the grey Ashford Hollow light came in through the window and landed on the table and the photograph and the reading glasses he still hadn't moved.
"Thursday," he said to her photograph on the table,Margaret looked back at him the way she always looked that particular smile she had, slightly crooked on the left side, the smile that meant she found something amusing but was being polite about it.
"I know," he said. "I know what you'd say."
He drank his cofee and looked away.
Karen called at half nine.
"How are you," she said.
"Fine," Richard said, " just tired."
"You're always tired."
"I'm always tired," he agreed.
"Are you eating?"
"Karen."
"I'm asking."
"Yes I'm eating, I had eggs this morning."
"Scrambled or fried?"
"What does it matter?"
"It matters because scrambled means you made an effort and fried means you just cracked them in the pan and hoped for the best."
Richard almost smiled. "Scrambled," he said.
"Good." A pause. "Therapy today?"
"Four o'clock."
"Good," she said again. Then "Richard."
Something in her voice.
"What," he said.
"Are you actually okay?, not fine, not tired, not I'm managing like actually okay."
He looked at the drawer.
"I don't know," he said honestly.
Karen was quiet for a moment.
"Do you want me to come over this weekend?" she said.
"You don't have to"
"I know I don't have to, do you want me to."
Richard looked at Margaret's photograph.
"Yes," he said, "Actually yes."
"Saturday," Karen said. "I'll bring that soup you like."
"You don't have to bring"
"Richard."
"Alright," he said, "Alright, Saturday."
He hung up.
He stood in the kitchen for a moment he
thought about telling her about the piece of paper and about the feeling he couldn't name that had been sitting in his chest since that Thursday session three weeks ago when Elena had looked at him with that thing in her face that wasn't warm.
He had almost said it.
He hadn't said it.
He didn't know why.
He arrived at Elena's office at three fifty-eight.
The waiting room was empty it usually was when he arrived, Elena ran a tight schedule, the previous client always gone before the next one arrived. He sat in the chair by the window and looked out at Mercer Street and watched Ashford Hollow move through its Thursday afternoon.
The town was it self ordinary and bustling with activities.
At four o'clock exactly the door opened.
"Richard," Elena said.
The session was different.
He noticed it within the first ten minutes and spent the rest of the hour trying to decide if he was imagining it.
She was there present, warm, asking the right questions, saying the right things. She asked about Margaret, she asked about Karen, she also asked about the coast trip and whether he had looked at any photographs recently and he said yes, last Tuesday, he had gone through the whole album from her last birthday and it had been he paused, looking for the right word both terrible and necessary, he said, and Elena nodded and said that was exactly the right way to describe it.
Except she looked at her hands once in the middle of a sentence and lost the thread of what she was saying and found it again quickly so quickly that he might not have noticed but he noticed.
Except she turned toward the window at one point for no apparent reason and stayed turned for just a second too long, like she was listening for something outside.
Except when he mentioned Margaret's name which he had mentioned fifty times in this room without incident something moved across Elena's face that he could not name.
He talked.
She listened.
She said the right things.
He left at four fifty-three.
Shook her hand at the door.
He walked to the lift.
Pressed the button.
Stood with his back to her the way he always did.
The lift came he got in and closed the doors.
He stood in the small mirrored box of the lift and looked at his own reflection and thought something is wrong.
Not with her necessarily.
With him.
With the fact that he kept coming back here and kept sitting in that chair and kept talking about Margaret to a woman who looked at him sometimes like she was cataloguing him and filing him and also deciding something about him that he hadn't been asked to weigh in on.
He stepped out of the lift into the Mercer Street afternoon.
Turned left.
Took the long way home — past the bakery, down toward the park, the small one near the pond where he and Margaret used to come on Sunday mornings with a bag of stale bread for the ducks.
He stood at the edge of the pond for a while.
The ducks were there, they were so fat and indifferent and entirely unconcerned with the grief of the people who stood at the edge of their pond with their hands in their pockets.
Richard stood and watched them.
Thought about Sunday mornings.
Thought about Margaret.
Thought about Elena's face and the thing that lived behind the warmth.
Thought about the piece of paper in the kitchen drawer.
Then he went home he made one cup of coffee.
Sat by the window.
Opened the drawer.
Read what he had written.
Thursday 14th, Elena Voss, the feeling walking to the car and being watched, still can't shake it and the fact that two of her clients were dead.
He looked at it for a long time.
Then he picked up his pen, and added one line.
Today was different,he folded the paper, and put it back.
Closed the drawer.
Looked at Margaret.
"I know," he said quietly. "I know you'd tell me I'm imagining things."
Margaret's crooked smile.
"Maybe I am," he said.
He finished his coffee.
Washed the mug.
Went to bed.
Lay in the dark.
Thought about Saturday and Karen's soup and whether he would tell her.
Decided he would.
Fell asleep.
Outside Ashford Hollow moved through its Thursday night the Crown filling up, the high street quieting, the streetlights coming on one by one down the length of Caldwell Road where a retired nurse sat in her chair by the window and drank her cocoa and read her book and thought about Sunday.