There was always one stool behind the counter and another that he used to prop open the door in summer, which now stood by the coat rack nobody ever used. He’d once wanted the store to be a homey place, the sort of place where you come in and hang up your coat and stay awhile, but it never had been. He’d never given any customer the impression that he wanted them to stay awhile. Kate found this other stool and dragged it around back, so that the two stools were now side by side, with a cup of mushroom soup on the counter in front of each one.

She took a sip. Her eyes closed. “I would wait four years for this soup,” she said.

He felt as if he would burst. He’d read about this feeling in novels, but he was sure he’d never experienced it. Meeting his wife had brought him pleasure, or a sort of relief, the mystery of whom to spend his life with solved—or so he’d thought. But he’d actually been fairly content before he met her, talking on the phone with Aaron, eating tuna in his little room, reading from the stacks of books borrowed from the store he now owned.

Mitchell wished his cup of soup would never end.

They took a long lunch. Customers, as always, were irritating and disruptive. They were worse in this kind of weather. There was a focus that went out of people’s eyes. They often forgot what they were looking for and stalled motionless in the aisles. When an elderly woman finally made it out the door, Kate grunted, imitating the way he had responded to her gratitude for finding her a book.

“It was Middlemarch,” he explained.

“Which is a great book.”

“I know it’s a great book.” He was aware of how much like Paula he sounded when he whined. “But shouldn’t she have read it by now? She’s only a hundred and thirty-seven years old.”

“She could be reading it for the hundred and thirty-seventh time. Or she could be giving it to her granddaughter. Or great-granddaughter.” She seemed amused, entirely uninterested in changing him. He knew it was like that at first with anyone. He also knew it might mean that she didn’t care about him at all.

He tried to think of what it really was that had bothered him about the old woman. For once in his life, thought turned instantly to speech before he could stop it. “I miss Mrs. White.”

Kate looked up from her soup.

“An old woman who used to come in here.”

“What was she like?”