Both of us went still. Caleb’s fork hovered halfway to his mouth. I held my breath without meaning to.
Sterling took another bite. “I’m telling you for next time.”
“There’s going to be a next time?” Caleb asked. Very quietly.
“I said I’d make eggs. That implies a next time.”
Caleb looked at me. I looked at Caleb. Sterling ate his eggs. The coffee went cold on the table between us, and nobody moved to fix it.
I sat at that table and knew, with the certainty I brought to things that mattered, that I was going to remember this morning for the rest of my life. The specific Tuesday of it. The eggs and the cold coffee and Sterling sitting at our table like he’d always been there, like the house had built itself around him while he was gone and he’d only just noticed it fit.
Later, after dishes and Caleb went out to the kitchen garden with the determined stride he brought to anything involving dirt, I dropped into the chair across from Sterling and set my elbows on the table.
“I want it on the record that the bed was my idea.”
“It’s been noted,” Sterling said.
“I want it re-noted.”
Sterling looked at me over his coffee. “The house.”
“I contributed meaningfully.”
“You put the desk in.”
“I put your desk in. Before you said you were coming back.” I held his gaze. “I want that noted separately.”
“Why?”
“Because it means I knew.”
“Caleb knew too.”
“I know Caleb knew. I’m talking about me knowing.”
“You want credit for knowing.”
“I want credit for knowing and acting on it. Those are different things.”
Sterling went quiet. Looked at his coffee. Said, flat: “The desk is in the right place.”
“East window.”
“East window.”
“Caleb’s idea.”
“I know.”
I watched his face do the thing—the slight crease beside his left eye, the firm set of his jaw holding back whatever was behind it—and said it like it was weather. “You’re going to tell him.”
Sterling’s jaw tightened. “He already knows.”
“He knows it’s there. He doesn’t know you noticed why.”
“He put it there. The why is implied.”
“The why needs saying.”
