"It's straight," Ruth said.
"I know," he said. "I wanted you to see that I know."
In the afternoon she walked to the pharmacy so Caleb would not have to, and so she would have a street under her that was not a conversation. Linden's main blocks had changed in the ways of towns that get a coffee shop and lose a hardware aisle. The co-op was gone. A yoga studio had taken the storefront where she had bought tights for band. She did not go in. At the pharmacy she picked up Arthur's prescriptions and, because the technician asked, confirmed his birthdate. The date felt like a password she had been trusted with and had not deserved any more than Caleb had. Walking back, bag in hand, she passed the bank. Through the glass she saw Denise at a desk, head bent, the ordinary labor of other people's money. Ruth did not go in. The cards were not hers to visit like patients.
Caleb met her on the sidewalk half a block from the house, which meant he had been watching for her. He took the bag without making it a seizure.
"Shah called," he said. "They can see him Friday. Not an emergency. A follow-up we were already owed. I said yes. I'm telling you before we walk in so you don't hear it as a plot."
"Friday."
"The day after Denise. Or before, if we go back to her Thursday. I don't have a scheme, Ruth. I have a calendar that keeps growing teeth."
She believed him and did not say so. Saying so would have cost her the last piece of ground she was standing on, and she was not ready to be a person without ground. They walked the rest of the way without talking. The pear tree ticked against the gutter. Luis had said the ticking was the branch and not the house settling. She was glad there was a difference. She was not glad she needed a stranger to name it.
At supper Arthur insisted on setting the table. He put out three forks, three knives, three glasses. He folded the paper napkins into rectangles, not swans. Helen had done swans for birthdays. Rectangles meant an ordinary night, if anyone could still recognize one. Caleb had roasted the chicken. Ruth had made a salad that was mostly a way to keep her hands busy. They ate. They talked about the fascia board. They talked about Jonah's midterms, which he was no longer taking, because he was out of college and in a first job at a county planner's office, a fact Arthur kept misplacing by a year. Ruth corrected it gently. Arthur received the correction.