Ask Me

Talia asked Edvard to meet in the city library, where they had once worked at separate tables. He arrived without a statement in his pocket. That was the first thing she noticed and the first thing he had deliberately left behind.

She had considered leaving the conversation for later. A library was not neutral merely because other people could see them; it was a room where she had sent the bid he had never read, a room he might turn into an apology scene while her interview still waited. She had chosen it herself because she wanted a table between them until she no longer did.

He was early. He had a book open and was not reading it. She liked the honest failure of that more than an arranged expression of concern.

“I thought I was protecting you,” he said. “I wrote a sentence about your integrity because I couldn’t bear hearing it questioned. You told me you wanted to answer for yourself. I knew that. I did it anyway.”

She let the words stand. He had not inserted an excuse between them.

“You did it at the map room too,” she said.

“When I had the lamp fixed?”

“The lamp was a kindness. The first press note was an omission; you corrected it. This was different. You heard me tell you exactly what I needed, and in the first hard moment you decided your own certainty could protect me.”

He did not argue that his good intention was evidence in his favour. “Yes.”

“I would have liked you to ask whether I wanted a public answer. I would have said yes to a correction of dates. I might have asked you to say your office had changed the clause. We could have decided together what belonged to whom.”

“I wanted to close the story before anyone could hurt you with it.”

“That is not a thing you can close.”

“I know. I had to see you lose a day’s work to my draft before I understood how little I had learned.” He looked down at the book. “I am sorry the cost fell on you.”

The apology did not pretend to restore her day. She felt the desire to comfort him and let it pass. They had both been trained to make a difficult conversation easier for the person in front of them. She needed this one to remain difficult long enough to be useful.

“What did you want me to do?” he asked.

“Ask me whether I wanted a response at all. I did, but it needed to be mine. Then speak about the decisions that were yours.”

“I can do that next time.”

“What if I ask you to leave a question unanswered?” she said. “Even one that makes you look careless?”

“Then I leave it.”

“What if I ask you not to defend me because I need to defend myself?”

He took a breath before answering. “Then I ask whether there is something I can do that is mine. I can speak for my office’s error. I can refuse a false story about a proposal to Signe. I can let your work be yours, even when people are unfair to you.”

“That is what I was asking for.”

“I heard it as a test of whether I loved you enough to act. It was a test of whether I could listen.”

She looked up sharply. He had used the word loved without making it the center of the apology. She could answer it or not. He would still be responsible for what he had done.

“There will be a next time. Not the same photograph. Some other difficult room.”

“And if I get it wrong?” he asked.

“I will tell you. I won’t stay just to teach you, Edvard. But I won’t leave merely because learning is visible.”

“That is more generous than I have earned today.”

“It isn’t generosity. It’s my choice. I am still deciding what it means.”

“I know.” He looked at the books stacked beside her. “Do you want me in it?”

The question did not ask her to assure him. It made room for an answer he might dislike.

“Yes. I want you in my life. I do not want my life explained as an extension of yours.”

“Then I need to keep learning where mine stops.”

She reached across the table. He did not take her hand until she turned it palm up. The small delay felt like a form of listening.

His hand was warm and a little unsteady. She remembered telling him in the map room that wanting him did not mean consenting to become an omission. Now she was asking for something more complicated: to be publicly known and still to own what she said.

“I have an interview on Thursday,” she told him.

“With the regional commission?”

“Yes.”

“I hope they ask about the port article.”

“They may ask about you.”

“What will you say?”

“The dated facts. Then I’ll ask if they have a question about my work.”

“That sounds like you.”

“It is me. You do not have to certify it.”

His mouth tilted. “I deserved that.”

“You did.”

They stayed until the library closed. Sometimes they spoke; sometimes she read her interview notes while he read the first four pages of his book repeatedly. The quiet did not mend everything. It gave them practice being near one another without making every minute a referendum on forgiveness.

When the librarian turned out the light over the far tables, Talia gathered her pages. One sheet remained in Edvard’s book. She reached for it; he handed it back without looking. She had written three ways of answering the panel’s question about independence. He had seen none of them.

“I didn’t read it,” he said.

“I know. I would have seen your face if you had.”

“It would have been an awful face.”

“You have several.”

“Most of them prepared by experts.”

“This one is your own.”

He smiled and asked whether she wanted company on the walk. She did. At the exit they passed a rack of local newspapers. Their photograph was on one cover, smaller than a story about the hospital’s new night service. Talia stopped. The caption used her name and called her Edvard’s companion. It did not mention her correction. She could live with one sentence failing to contain her whole life; she would not let one sentence replace it.

“Do you want me to speak to them?” Edvard asked, then caught himself. “That was my old question. Do you want to speak to them?”

“Not about that caption. If they ask me about the annex, I will answer.”

“And if they ask about us?”

“I can say we are together. I do not have to give them my reasons.”

“I would say the same.”

They went outside. For a while they walked in a silence made companionable by the fact that it had been chosen. Then Edvard said, “There may be invitations that include you because of me. I will show them to you, not answer them for you.”

“Good. And there may be weeks my work takes me out of reach. I will tell you when I know, rather than apologize afterward for having the work.”

“Good.”

“That sounded suspiciously like a negotiation.”

“I think we are learning to make agreements small enough to keep.”

She liked him for saying we. He had not converted the library apology into a promise she alone would monitor. They would both have habits to unlearn. She was willing to try because he had made room for the possibility that she could decide not to.

They continued towards the public garden. He did not offer to telephone anyone on the regional panel. He asked what answer she hoped to give them about her availability.

“The honest one. I can work there for four months. I can visit here. You can visit me when your work allows it.”

“I would like that.”

“You might dislike the trains.”

“I already dislike the trains. That’s not a reason to refuse the journey.”

Rain began as they reached the garden gate. They took shelter beneath an awning. He asked, “Do you want me to come closer?”

“Yes.” She drew his coat towards her. “I have missed you.”

“I have missed you too.”

He did not make missing her an argument for having been right. She found that she could kiss him with anger still somewhere in her and pleasure rising beside it. His hand held her jaw lightly; she could have stepped away, and did not. The rain struck the awning hard enough that they laughed at how little privacy it gave them.

Later she went home with him because she wanted to, and they cooked together with the radio low. In the kitchen he reached to move a pan from her hand, then stopped.

“May I?” he asked.

“You may chop the onions. I’m keeping the pan.”

He obeyed. The meal was better for it.

While he cut the onions, the radio announced a parliamentary debate about the treaty. Edvard reached to turn it off. Talia covered his hand with hers.

“We can hear it.”

“It will be a series of men explaining what they think I meant.”

“That is unpleasant. It isn’t dangerous in this kitchen.”

“You sound very certain.”

“No. I sound as though I want to finish cooking without the prince in this room deciding which noises I can bear.”

He let the radio play. The debate was tedious and occasionally wrong. Talia corrected one claim aloud; Edvard laughed at another. When it became genuinely repetitive, she turned it off herself. He looked at her as though the small act had taught him something a month of formal briefings had not.

“I keep wanting to put you where no one can touch you,” he said.

“You cannot.”

“I know. It frightens me that I can make matters worse while trying.”

“Then let me tell you when you do. I will also tell you when you make them better.”

“Have I?”

She took the knife from his hand and set it down. “You asked Lukas what the night foreman heard. You told Signe the truth when a beautiful lie would have made the week easier. You noticed a bad lamp. You learned to ask before fixing it. Yes, Edvard. I am not here only because of your mistakes.”

He had no polished reply. That was how she knew the words had reached him. She kissed his cheek and returned the knife. “Now the onions. We will have a second crisis if you let them burn.”

They finished the meal with the window open to the rain. Later, as they put the plates away, he asked whether she had ever expected to fall in love with someone whose name made people stand.

“I didn’t expect to fall in love with anyone who forgot where he kept the tea,” she said.

He went still, then smiled without asking her to repeat the phrase she had used. She had spoken before intending to. It was true. She did not have to turn it into the formal declaration that would come when both of them were ready.

“And you?” she asked. “Did you expect to fall for an interpreter who makes you do your own chopping?”

“No. I had hoped for a woman who would let me order dinner.”

“You chose badly.”

“I chose, for once, with my eyes open.”

They let the joke stand. The care beneath it was not a promise that every public room would be kind to them. It was a promise to keep seeing the person in the kitchen when those rooms grew loud.

They ate the onions in a dish she would never cook for Marta, too salty and rescued with bread. Edvard asked whether she would stay. Talia considered the question in the kitchen light, where neither a photograph nor a royal office could answer for her.

“Tonight,” she said. “Tomorrow I need my own desk before the interview.”

“Tonight is enough.”

She put down her fork and kissed him because she wanted to, then returned to the meal. Neither of them called the small sequence a cure. It was an evening they had made after admitting that love would not protect them from careless habits. They could still choose what they did next.