The roof terrace is reached by a staircase that was never intended for people carrying coffee. Iris goes first with both cups, refusing your offer to help because, she says, you once dropped an entire birthday cake on these steps and have not yet completed your probation. The pots Dora planted are wild now. Rosemary leans into lavender. A small fig tree has escaped its cane support and is making its own arrangements with the sky. From here, Bellweather looks less like the place you left and more like a collection of lives continuing without asking your permission. Someone is painting a window frame. Someone is teaching a child to ride a bicycle. The canal moves steadily beneath the bridge where you and Iris used to sit with your shoes dangling over the water. You ask what she has been doing with her days. She tells you about restoring damaged prints for the town museum, and about a commission that failed, and a new recipe for lentils that she insists is more interesting than it sounds. You listen until she stops treating the answer as a summary and begins telling you what actually matters. She likes the quiet concentration of her work. She dislikes how often people mistake living here for never having wanted anything else. You apologise. You have made that mistake yourself. Iris turns her cup slowly between her hands. Then ask me what I want now, she says. You do. She smiles, a little startled by how simple it is when you finally let the question stand. There is something I want to tell you this weekend, she says. But I would like us to have a little time first.
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.