Episodul 104 · Everything Fit

She stood and took her coat.

On the way, she thought about what she was going to say. She made a list, the way she always did, except this time the list was made of lies. She tried them one by one in her head, to see which one sounded true. Most were too large. One was good.

Varren opened the door on the second ring. He was dressed to go out, shirt buttoned to the top, like a man who had just come back from somewhere or was about to leave. He looked at her, then behind her at the street, and only then smiled.

— Alone, he said.

— Alone.

The yard looked different. The wooden chair was no longer at the edge of the pool. It stood beneath the eaves beside the table, its back against the wall, the way chairs stood in everyone’s yards. The water in the pool was the same, clear and still, and the pump hummed evenly underneath, but now no one sat facing it.

— You moved it, Krista said.

— I said I would.

They sat at the table. Varren did not bring coffee. He sat with his hands clasped on the tabletop, calm, the way he sat at the long table in the archive when he listened to others.

Krista told him the news about Castell briefly, using the investigator’s words. Varren listened to the end. When he heard about Kale’s objection in the log, he lowered his head for a moment, like a man remembering something and not wanting anyone to see him remember it.

— He wrote everything down, he said quietly. Kale. Everything he didn’t like. Mary used to laugh at him for it.

— Castell says he didn’t hire anyone.

— Castell found money for the garden by stealing from the garden, Varren said. And he’s proud of it. Men like him don’t lie about money, only about what they did for it.

Krista looked at his hands. They lay clasped, motionless, his thumbs resting one over the other. Nothing moved.

Now, she told herself. You lie first.

— I told Soles, she said.

She said it simply, without emphasis, with a measured weariness at the end, like a person who had carried a weight and set it down. It was the best lie on her list. She knew by the way it came out: easy, warm, without a single edge for anyone to catch.

Varren did not flinch. He held her eyes for a moment, then took a long, deep breath through his nose, and his shoulders dropped the way a man’s do after he has held them raised too long.

— Then good, he said. You took something off me. How did he take it?

His thumbs did not move. Neither did his breathing once it settled. Krista looked at him with everything that had settled into her hands that morning, with the borrowed ease, with the green-shaded lamp, and found nothing. No crease. This man truly was glad he no longer had to keep silent.

— I didn’t tell him anything, she said. I lied to you. I wanted to see what you’d do.

Varren looked at her for a long moment. Then, to her surprise, he smiled. A small, crooked smile, almost proud.

— I can tell now, he said. You said it too nicely. You never say things nicely, Krista. You say them straight.

Krista felt heat rise into her cheeks. Not from embarrassment. From something stranger, like losing a hand and liking the way you lost it.

— I went to the administration today, she said. I saw the request for Key Fourteen. With my signature. Stapled to the sponsor’s contract. Between page six and page seven.

— Yes.

— You made me sign it.

— Yes, Varren said. The night with the wine. I showed you where, and you signed. I knew you wouldn’t look. You were so happy the exhibition was saved that you’d have signed the tablecloth.

He did not defend himself. His hands remained clasped on the table, calm, and he looked at her directly with tired eyes, while Krista looked at him with everything she had, with Casimir, with two winters of hands read beneath a low lamp, and saw a man who hid nothing with his hands.

He was not lying. He had not lied in the yard either, with the key on the table. He had told her then, “in your name,” and it had been in her name. He told her now, “I made you sign,” and he had. Everything he said was true, word for word, with a simplicity that disarmed her. What he had done was ugly, but small. A man who wanted a quiet place and had stolen a signature to reach it.

— Why didn’t you just ask me? she asked.

— Because you would’ve said yes, Varren said. And then it would’ve been a secret belonging to both of us. I didn’t want to give you a key you had to hide too.

Krista laughed once, despite herself. It was the most crooked and most truthful thing anyone had told her all day.

She left around nine. At the gate, Varren put his hand lightly on her shoulder, his fingers dry and warm.

— I’ll tell him, he said. Soon. Now, with Castell, maybe even sooner.

— I know.

Out on the street, she stopped beneath a lamp and took her hands from her pockets. Her fingers were moving on their own, slowly over her knuckles, as though carrying a match that was not there. She closed them into a fist.

She had read him. Read him the way no one had ever read her, and found nothing. That calmed her completely. She felt light on the walk home, lighter than she had since the flood. She had a guilty man for the fraud at the garden. She had a friend who had stolen her signature and admitted it. She had a secret she was allowed to keep because the man it belonged to would tell it himself.

At home, she closed her eyes beside the table. Casimir waited beyond the curling leaves. For the first time, his eyes found her. They followed the match still turning between her fingers.

Show.

She held out the match. He took it, solid between his fingers, and turned it once across his knuckles before giving it back. She remembered him against the wall behind the freight depot, all the good lies used up. Here he wanted to see what she had brought him.

She opened her eyes. Varren had told her the truth.

Everything fit.