Chapter 38: The Proposal

The flat at 14C had one table, and tonight it had three people at it.

Gran sat at the head, with her coat on the back of her chair and the jar of pears open in front of her.

She had found the can opener in the second drawer without being told where it was.

"Eat," she said.

Ethan ate.

His eyes were still red, and he held the spoon too tightly.

He kept looking at Evan across the pears, and then looking away.

Evan found that he could not stop looking back.

Nobody mentioned the stage.

Gran told a long story about the church roof, and who had paid for it, and who had said they would and had not.

She finished it, and told a second one.

Then she put down her fork and looked at them both over her glasses.

"I'm going to walk to the bakery," she said.

"It's closed, Gran," Evan said. "It's ten at night."

"Then I'll stand outside it."

She put on her coat, and her hat, and took her handbag, and stopped at the door.

"Whatever it is," she said, "say it plain."

"Neither of you is any good at the other kind."

The door shut behind her, and her steps went away down the stairs.

The radiator knocked twice.

Ethan put down his spoon.

"The paper," he said.

"After the bowl."

"I've finished the bowl."

"Then now."

It was still in Ethan's jacket pocket, folded in four.

He took it out and flattened it on the table.

Evan watched him do it, and his own heart went very hard.

It was a single page in Evan's cramped printing, with two crossings out.

Across the top it said: TERMS.

Ethan began to read aloud, and his voice was not good at it.

"One. Equal. Nobody owns the other's lease, seat, shares or time. Nobody holds anything over the other to keep him."

He stopped, and breathed, and went on.

"Two. Each keeps his own work and his own money."

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