The Price of Staying

Rowan did not answer immediately. He set the brown book on the counter with both hands and turned it so she could read the title: The Last Call.

"Three years ago," he said, "my mother called while I was at work. I let it ring because we had argued that morning. She died that night. An aneurysm. The doctors said answering wouldn't have changed it."

He ran a thumb along the closed cover.

"This book shows a life where I answered. We talked about something ordinary. What she was making for dinner. I wanted to hear it again."

Mira sat down. "So you signed."

"I thought I'd stay a week."

The shop's clock made a small, distinct sound. She found herself counting it.

"You can leave," she said. "The card says so."

"I know."

"Return the book. Close the ledger. Cross the threshold before the bell."

"I know every word."

She heard her own insistence and stopped. Knowing the way out was not the same as being ready to take it.

Rowan opened the cover. She saw a kitchen, an elderly woman putting a lid on a pot, a younger Rowan answering a phone in a library corridor. He shut it again before the conversation began.

"The page doesn't change," he said. "I've changed around it. Sometimes I think if I go, I'll be choosing to lose her again."

Mira wanted to tell him he wasn't. She also knew how little a true sentence could do when placed too quickly on another person's grief.

"Who is outside?" she asked instead.

"My sister, Elin. Friends. A flat someone has probably emptied by now. Three years of things I can't ask them to put back."

"Does she know where you are?"

"No. I told her I was going away. I sent a letter the first month. Then writing another became harder."

Mira looked at the inward-facing watch. It was stopped.

"I can't be your reason to leave," she said, before she could make a different, more romantic offer. "Seven minutes with me isn't a life either."

He nodded, his eyes on the brown cover. "I wouldn't ask you to sign."

"I was already imagining it. Every night here. No overdue work, no awkward lunch with Ada. No decisions except which beautiful mistake to visit next."

She disliked hearing it aloud. She was glad he let her finish.

"What would it cost?" she asked.

"Every morning outside. You don't grow younger here, and time doesn't wait for you. You can bring food and visit pages, but you can't go out in daylight while you remain the keeper. You must leave the role first. That's what staying means."

He pointed to the ledger's inside cover, where the same condition was written beneath the signature line. Nothing hidden, nothing sprung on her after consent. Just a consequence she had preferred not to read closely.

"What do you do in the daytime?" she asked.

"Sleep. Read ordinary books. Keep the place in order. There are rooms at the back. At first it was peaceful. Then it was easier than explaining where I'd been."

She thought of how carefully he mended everything around him. Perhaps he had been making a home. Perhaps he had been making reasons not to walk out of it. He could have been doing both.

Mira thought of Nell's drawings, always sent after the small occasions were already over. She thought of Ada standing in a hired kitchen, asking whether a simple lunch could be enough.

"I'm meeting them tomorrow," she said. "I have to call before it becomes another thing I didn't do."

Rowan put her untouched tea beside the door. "Then go."

There was a tenderness in the words that nearly made her stay. She kissed his cheek instead. His eyes closed for a moment.

"If you decide to leave," she said, "my studio is across the street. I open at nine. That's an address, not an obligation."

She stepped outside before the bell. At home, she called Ada, who answered on the fourth ring with a wary hello.

"Lunch," Mira said. "Tomorrow. Nothing elaborate."

They met in a park with sandwiches. Nell showed Mira a drawing of a blue horse, then ran towards the swings. Ada watched her go.

"I hated that you stayed and I didn't," Ada said. "So I acted as though staying was something you naturally wanted."

"Sometimes I wanted to leave so badly I couldn't bear to tell you."

"You could have asked me."

"You could have asked me too."

They sat with that, sharing neither a solution nor the old convenient fiction that only one had suffered. Before they left, they arranged a call for Wednesday and a longer visit in winter. Nell put the blue horse in Mira's bag.

That night, Mira brought the drawing to the shop. Rowan studied it with such attention that she understood what daylight had begun to mean to him.