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Lila stops in the doorway and looks at the low light, the quilt on the couch, the second toothbrush in the bathroom she can see straight down the hall.

"So you're living here now."

"I'm staying here."

"Right." She sets the loaf on the counter. "Pumpkin bread. I made it this morning."

She peels back the corner of the towel it's wrapped in and I recognize the towel before I recognize the bread. Yellow, with a burn on one corner from the summer my toaster died.

"That's mine."

"You left it at my place in August." She folds the corner back down. "I keep meaning to bring it."

I don't remember that. I remember her mother's birthday, the name of her first cat, the exact face she makes before she cries, but I don't remember leaving a dish towel at her house.

"Thanks," I say.

We sit. Cass stays on the porch instead of the yard. Through the front window I can see the shape of her against the last of the light.

Lila talks for a while about nothing. The bakery's out of the good coffee. Her mother's knee. She's careful and warm and funny, and it works, like it's been working for three years.

Then she says, "I'm sorry about Thursday."

"You don't have to be."

"I pushed. On your porch. You had a burned door and I made it about me." She turns her mug in a circle. "I've been off lately. Work's been..."

"How is work?"

It comes out flat. She doesn't hear it that way, or she pretends not to.

"Slammed. I've got a shift at eleven, so I can't stay long."

Every candle in the room stands up straight.

The flames go from orange to white, all of them at once, no flicker, no lean, like someone pulled them tight. It lasts about a second. Then they drop back and go on burning like nothing happened, and wax runs down the side of the saucer.

Lila looks at them.

"Is that you?"

"Probably."

"Does it do that a lot?"

"It does whatever it wants."

I don't tell her the rest. That it's never done that before. That it happened because of a word she said, and I could feel which word was a lie, the way you feel a chipped tooth with your tongue.

Slammed.

She asks about him next, because of course she does.

"Where is he?"

"Out."

"Out where?"