They ate what they could. The coffee did taste like a spoon. When the check came, both of them reached, and Arthur put his hand on the slip and said, "I still have a wallet," and paid with a twenty and a five and left a tip that was too large, which was a kind of speech too.
On the sidewalk he looked at the sky, judging it.
"I'll ride with Ruth to the house," he said. "Caleb, you take your car. I want my apples. Don't look like that. If I only ride with one of you, the other one will make a story out of it before supper. So Ruth takes me, and you bring the apples, and at the house we will be three people who have not yet finished a sentence. That is the best I can offer you. It is more than I offered Helen some nights. Don't tell me that's a low bar. I know the height of my bars."
He started toward the rental. Ruth went with him. Caleb stood a moment with the diner door swinging shut behind a stranger, then walked back toward the bank lot, hands in the canvas jacket, the Thursday card already elsewhere, in a folder, in a system, in the part of the afternoon that would not stay put.
The house on Orchard Street had been white when Ruth was small and was now the color of an eggshell left too long in a bowl. The pear tree had done what Arthur said. It had shouldered the gutter off the east corner and dropped fruit no one fully kept up with, so the yard smelled sweet and slightly rotten, a smell Ruth associated with September phone calls. She parked in the drive behind the space where Caleb's car would go. Arthur unbuckled himself. He was particular about that, about not being unbuckled by other people.
"The key is under the frog," he said, and then, "No. He moved the frog. The key is in my pocket. Don't look impressed. I remembered the wrong thing first. That's the sport now. Remembering which mistake you just made."
Inside, the kitchen was cleaner than her fear had designed. The counters were clear. A dish towel printed with chickens hung square on the oven handle. Helen's chickens. Ruth put her hand on the back of a chair and did not sit. The table was the same oak table, scarred where she had dug a ballpoint into it during a fight about a curfew in 1993. She found the scar with her thumb. It was still there, a shallow groove in the shape of nothing.
Caleb came in with the apples and the library tote and did not slam the door. He set the apples in the colander because that was where apples went. He looked at Ruth's hand on the scar and said nothing about it.
"I'll make the bed in your old room," he said. "If you're staying."