Chapter 002 — The Fourteenth Interview

The claw marks were gone by sunrise. Evelyn stood in the doorway at six in the morning with a mug of coffee gone cold, staring at the clean, pale wood of the doorframe. Four deep furrows, an inch apart, had run from chest height to the threshold. Now there was nothing.

She was still staring at the door when Elias came padding down the stairs behind her, barefoot, his hair sticking up at the back. He was holding one of his two good shirts by the collar with both hands.

"Evelyn. One of the buttons fell off."

"Which one?"

"The important one."

She sighed, set the coffee down, and took the shirt. "Come here. Sit. I'll sew it."

He sat on the top step, and she knelt in front of him with the little sewing kit she kept behind the counter, threading the needle with her teeth while he watched her with the grave concentration of a man watching surgery.

"Where are you interviewing today?"

"The retirement home." He said it with the dignity of a man announcing an ambassadorship. "Mr. Hall gave me the number. He said I have the kind of face old ladies want to feed."

"That is either a compliment or an insult and I have decided not to ask which."

She bit the thread and tied it off. "There. Do not twist it like a towel when you shower."

"I never twist my shirts like a towel."

"Elias."

"Only a little."

She looked up at him. He looked back, wide-eyed and unhelpfully sincere, and she felt the familiar thing happen in her chest — the soft thing and the cold thing, both at once.

"Go eat breakfast. Toast is in the rack. Don't —"

Too late. There was a noise from the kitchen she had come to recognize. The noise of smoke.

She found him standing in front of the toaster with a pair of tongs, extracting a blackened slab of bread that was still smoldering. Elias was fanning the toaster with an oven mitt and apologizing to it.

"I didn't put it on dark. I put it on medium."

"The toaster is old. It has opinions."

She tossed the charcoal slab into the yard. The neighbor's cat — a very large, very orange tom that had made it its personal mission to terrorize Elias — was sitting on the fence. It hissed.

Elias yelped and stepped behind Evelyn.

"Evelyn. The tiger is back."

"That is a ten-pound house cat."

"It is a predator. It has killed before."

The cat yawned and sauntered off. Elias peeked out from behind her shoulder.

"Is it gone?"

"It is gone."

She turned around. He was standing in her kitchen in his good shirt, clutching a stuffed brown dog he had fetched from the couch. The dog was the size of a loaf of bread and had one button eye missing. Elias called him Buttons.

"Elias. You cannot bring Buttons to the retirement home."

"Why not?"

"Because you are applying for a job, not a playdate."

She made him leave Buttons on the couch. She watched him go down the street, then locked the door, turned the sign to OPEN, and knelt behind the counter. She pulled out the sheaf of old hand-copied pages bound in cracked leather. The wolf-script was tight and angular, and she read the same two words she had read every night for a week.

Seal. Loosening.

She read them until the shop bell jingled and Mrs. Martinez came in for her weekly roses, then slipped the pages back under the shelf and put on her customer face.

At four o'clock she walked to the retirement home to pick Elias up. She saw him from half a block away. He was sitting on the front steps. Three old ladies were arranged around him, passing him cookies. A small white terrier was in his lap. He had a crocheted pink hat on his head.

"How did it go?"

Elias looked up. His expression was the expression of a man who has been told his dog has died.

"They said I don't need to come back tomorrow."

"Why not?"

"Mrs. Gunderson said I was too likable. She said the orderlies are all very jealous, and that I would steal their boyfriends."

Evelyn pressed her lips together. She failed to keep the laugh in.

"Don't laugh. That was my fourteenth interview. I am a failure at gainful employment."

"You are not a failure. You are a man who forgot his entire life three months ago. You are doing remarkably."

"Am I?"

"You are. You burn toast. You flood the kitchen. You once used my good scissors to cut a snowflake out of a potato. But you are trying."

He looked down at the terrier in his lap. It licked his chin.

"Evelyn. What if I am just not useful? What if the best I am ever going to be is the man who sits on the steps and gets fed cookies by old ladies?"

She sat down on the step next to him, the pink crocheted hat and all, and took his face in her hands. His skin was warm. His gray eyes were lost.

"Elias. You are the most useful thing I have. You standing in my kitchen in the morning is worth every other thing I own."

He blinked. "Really?"

"Really."

"Even when I flood the kitchen?"

"Even when you flood the kitchen."

He leaned into her hand. The old ladies made approving noises. Evelyn kissed him, quick and dry on the mouth, and the old ladies went "oooooh," and Elias went the color of a tomato.

On the walk home he was quiet. He kept touching his lips. He almost walked into a lamppost. She pulled him back by the elbow.

"Careful."

"Sorry. I was thinking."

"About what?"

"About whether we could do that again. Sometime. Not to brag. I just thought it was — very good."

She laughed so hard she had to stop walking.

When they got home she made him soup. He set the table. He came up behind her while she was stirring and put his arms around her waist, very gently. She leaned back into him. He rested his chin on the top of her head.

"Evelyn."

"Yeah?"

"I don't remember anything. But I don't want to leave you."

She went very still. He had said it the night she found him, half-delirious on her couch. She had never expected him to say it again, out loud, in her kitchen, while the soup boiled.

She turned around in his arms. He was looking at her with those lost, honest eyes, and she had to look away before she cried.

"We are not leaving. You are stuck with me."

"Good."