On Friday evening, Iris arrives with tomatoes, a loaf of bread, and a basil plant she claims is too dramatic to be left alone. You have spent the day packing books. She has spent it repairing a print in which somebody spilled an entire cup of tea over a lake. Dora's kitchen is too small for two people to avoid each other successfully. You discover this while looking for a knife, then again while reaching for the salt, then a third time when Iris catches you trying to move aside before she has actually asked you to. You can stay where you are, she says. I know how to get past a person. It is such a small sentence that you almost miss what it offers. You chop tomatoes. She tears the basil. The recipe is one Dora taught both of you, separately, with contradictory instructions about how much garlic constituted courage. For the first time since arriving, you can remember your grandmother without feeling that you must hold the entire memory still. After dinner, Iris washes while you dry. She tells you she once applied for a restoration fellowship abroad and withdrew before the interview. Her father was ill then. Staying was the right decision, but she is still learning not to turn one right decision into a rule for the rest of her life. You ask whether she would apply again. She leaves her hands beneath the running water for a moment. I already did, she says. The admission changes the room, but not in the way fear tells you it should. You turn off the tap so that you can hear her properly.
A weekend in your grandmother’s bookshop. A box of unsent letters. The person you never quite said goodbye to.
Listen closely. Choose carefully. Carry the consequences.
Every path leaves a different story.