In the morning, she told him she was going to walk to the sea.
He said: do you want me to come.
She said: no.
He said: all right.
She said: I would like to be alone for a while.
He said: I will be here.
She put on her coat. She went out through the garden. She went through the gate. She went down to the beach.
The sea was the same sea. The sand was the same sand. The light was the same light. She walked to the edge of the water and stood there, and the water came up to her ankles and went back, and she stood there, and she thought: I am going to say things to the sea.
She thought: I have not said these things to anyone. I am going to say them to the sea, because the sea will not answer, and the not-answering is what I need.
She thought: I am going to say them, and I am going to mean them, and then I am going to walk back up to the cottage, and the man is going to make lunch, and we are not going to talk about it.
She took off her shoes. She set them on the sand. She walked into the water until it was at her calves. She stood there.
She said, to the sea: I am Maeve. I am twenty-three. I have been in a place for four days that I cannot explain. There is a man in the cottage who does not know what year he was born, and I am in love with him, and I do not know what that means.
She waited. The sea did not answer. The water came up and went back. She said: I had a boyfriend. His name was Daniel. He was studying architecture. He was kind. He left me in a way that was not leaving. He left me the way you leave a window open in winter and only notice in March that the room is cold.
She said: I was in love with Daniel. I do not know when I stopped being in love with Daniel. I think I stopped being in love with Daniel before I knew I had stopped. I think I stopped being in love with Daniel because Daniel was not difficult to love, and I needed someone difficult to love, because the only person I had ever loved who was difficult to love was my mother.
The sea did not answer. She said: my mother is named Vivien. She played the cello when I was small. She stopped playing when I was nine. She did not explain why. She did not need to. I knew why. She had stopped because she could no longer bear the sound of her own playing. She had stopped because the playing was not the playing she had wanted to make of it.
She said: my mother loves me. I believe my mother loves me. I have believed this since I was a child. I have not always been able to feel it. My mother has loved me the way one loves a thing one cannot put down. She has loved me in her way. Her way has been a way I cannot reach.
The sea did not answer. She said: I had a job interview the day I came here. The job was at a publishing house. The man on the phone had a voice that was the voice of someone who had already decided not to give me the job. I was on a bus. I was wearing a coat I did not like. I had a CV I did not like. I decided, at the stop before mine, that I was not going to the interview. I was going to walk. I stepped into the road without looking. The car hit me. The driver was sober. The driver was not at fault. I was at fault. I was somewhere else in my head.
She said: I do not remember the impact. I remember the dark. The dark was warm. The dark was full of my mother. Then the dark was cold. Then the dark was this.
The sea did not answer. She said: the man in the cottage is named Alastair. He does not know where he came from. He does not know who he is. He has called me by a name that is not mine. He knows things I have not told him. He made me laugh for the first time in four years. He made me laugh, and I was afraid of the laugh, and I am still afraid of the laugh, because the laugh was a kind of being alive, and being alive is what I had stopped doing.
The sea did not answer. She said: I am not going to wake up.
The sea did not answer. She stood in the water for a long time. The water did not rise any higher. The light did not change. She stood in the water, and the water came up and went back, and she thought: I have said it. I have said it to the sea, and the sea has not answered, and I am going to walk back up to the cottage, and the man is going to make lunch, and we are not going to talk about it.
She walked back to the shore. She dried her feet on her coat. She put on her shoes. She walked back through the garden.
The back door was open. She went into the kitchen. He was not there. The table was set. There was a vase of the small white flowers. There was a covered dish on the table.
She went through the parlour. He was not there. She went up the stairs. He was not there. She went back down. She went to the front door. She opened it. The porch was empty. The chair was empty. The book was on the chair.
She went back to the kitchen. She uncovered the dish. It was a stew. It smelled of thyme and of something else she could not place, a kind of meat she had not eaten before. She sat at the table. She did not eat.
She sat at the table for a long time.
He came in through the back door. He had leaves on his sleeve. He saw her sitting at the table. He said: you are back.
She said: I am back.
He said: did you walk.
She said: I walked.
He said: I have made lunch.
She said: I see.
He came to the table. He sat down across from her. He looked at her. He said: you have been crying.
She put her hand to her face. She had been crying. She had not noticed. She said: I think I have.
He said: would you like to tell me.
She said: no.
He said: all right.
She said: would you like to tell me.
He said: tell you what.
She said: what the stew is.
He said: the stew is the stew.
She said: what kind of meat.
He said: I don’t know. There was meat in the cupboard. I made the stew with the meat that was in the cupboard.
She said: the cupboard did not have meat in it this morning.
He said: it had meat in it just now.
She said: it had meat in it when you opened it.
He said: yes.
She looked at him. She thought: the cupboard did not have meat in it this morning. I made breakfast. I made tea. I looked in the cupboard. There was no meat. She thought: I am not sure I looked. I am not sure I looked in the cupboard.
She said: I am tired.
He said: eat.
She ate. The stew was good. The meat was tender. She did not know what kind of meat it was. She ate the stew, and he ate the stew across from her, and the kitchen was quiet, and the clock said three, and the light did not change.
After lunch she said: I went to the sea this morning.
He said: I know.
She said: how do you know.
He said: because you told me.
She said: I told you I was going to walk to the sea. I did not tell you what I did at the sea.
He put down his fork. He looked at the table for a long time. Then he said: you are right.
She said: you do not know.
He said: I do not know.
She said: you do not know what I did at the sea.
He said: I do not know.
She said: then how do you know.
He said: I don’t know.
She looked at him. He looked at her. He did not lie well. He had never lied well. She thought: he is not lying. He does not know how he knows. She thought: he knows because he is part of me. He is the part of me that was listening when I was talking to the sea. She thought: he is the part of me that hears what I say when I think I am saying it only to the sea.
She did not say so. She said: all right.
He said: I am sorry.
She said: I know.
She stood. She went to the window. The garden was the same garden, and the other garden was still there beyond it, and the path through the long grasses led to the seat under the tree, and the seat was green with moss, and the tree was in full leaf. She stood at the window. She thought: I have said things to the sea, and he has heard them, and he has not denied hearing them, and I have not asked him how he has heard them, and we are going to live with this.
He came to stand beside her. He did not touch her. He stood a hand’s breadth from her. After a long time she said: the stew.
He said: what about it.
She said: the meat.
He said: what about the meat.
She said: it tasted of something.
He said: what.
She said: it tasted of a birthday.
He looked at her. He said: I am sorry.
She said: it tasted of my mother’s stew. The stew she made on my birthday, when I was seven, and again when I was eight, and not again after that, because the stew took her a long time to make, and after my father left, the long things became too long.
He did not answer. He stood beside her. He did not touch her. She did not touch him. They stood at the window, and the garden was the same, and the clock said three, and the light did not change.
After a long time she said: I think you are a piece of me.
He said: yes.
She said: I think you have always been a piece of me.
He said: yes.
She said: I think that is what the letter meant.
He said: I think so.
She said: I think the letter said not to trust the man who finds me, because the man who finds me is the piece of me I cannot trust.
He said: I don’t know.
She said: you don’t know.
He said: I don’t know what to trust.
She said: neither do I.
He said: but I trust you.
She looked at him. He was not looking at her. He was looking at the garden. She said: I know.
He said: I have always trusted you.
She said: I know.
She reached across the small distance between them, and she put her hand on his sleeve, and he did not move, and she left her hand there for a long time. The garden did not change. The light did not change. The clock said three. Somewhere, in a place she could not see, the kettle on the stove made the small sound that kettles make when they have just been taken off.
