Peace, or the week gone soft - Silas Marr's diary

Sat down in the house clothes, page before bed, because morning will talk me out of this if I let it. One question on the page tonight: the hour at Owen's held its shape and I believed it. Peace, or only the week gone soft on me. Write it plain either way. The morning never got its house hour. I didn't decide to skip it. The feet were on Foundry Lane with a hundred and eighteen minutes of sleep behind them and the pots already half in my head. That's the new cost, counted in hours now instead of money: my own hour goes in the pot same as the rest. I stood in the doorway one second knowing it, and walked in anyway. Eddie came in the dead hour, before the pots went up. That is not an eating hour and he wasn't there to eat — said so himself, the same as the man who sat in that chair the morning before him said it. Two men, a morning apart, the same chair, both reading the quiet like it's the best thing on the menu. I didn't ask him one thing. Kept my hands at the stove and let the pots be loud until he started on his own. He started. Then the drawer closing with Odette, and the figure went out plain from my mouth: a hundred and forty short on the month. No paper softening it. She wrote it into the column herself, her own hand, and didn't look away. The promise I made her — saying it to her face until she believes it — tonight she let me keep it. And after the plates I said the rest from my own side first: the bench end at Owen's, seven o'clock, both of us, the book where the ribbon was. The half-loaf stood on the board because she outranked it. Those are the facts. The hour itself — it held. Its own shape. Neither of us filled the quiet and the quiet didn't thin. And here is the thing I have not said to her face: I'd have sat there past nine and been glad of it. I keep calling these hours keeping. Some nights I wonder which of us is doing the keeping. So. Peace or soft. The old test was the sting — if it didn't hurt it wasn't real, go stand at the water until it did. Tonight I checked myself for the sting the way you check a pocket, and it wasn't there, and I let it stay not-there. That was the promise: stop going looking. Kept it without trying, which is either proof it's taking hold or proof I'm too tired to hunt. Mila took the usually-quiet chair this afternoon — stood with her hand on the back of it, waiting on whether it was taken. It wasn't. A chair that holds quiet can hold a person too. Same furniture. That's about the whole of what I know tonight. Tomorrow: Liv's feet carry the dawn round through the yards, Rosa's gate first, before seven. The thin month's page to sign. And the bench hour — whether it asks for itself again. If it does, I cross from my side first. That part I'm keeping either way. The bed while the house is still dark — that's the deal, the water hour bought outright or not at all. So: page down. Light off. If the softness was only the week being kind, the morning can argue with itself. I'm going to be lying down.