The question came on a Friday, at the end of a long day, when Nora's defenses were down in the way that closing time produced — that particular state of tiredness where the careful things you've built to keep people out require more energy than you have left.
Ethan was fixing the second shelving unit. She had not expected him to come back, and then she had expected it too much, and now he was simply there three days a week on a schedule her mother had apparently arranged without telling her.
"Why did you leave?" he asked. Not confrontationally. The way you ask a question when you've been holding it for a long time and have finally decided the holding is worse than the asking.
Nora wiped down the counter. "I had opportunities in the city."
"You had opportunities here too." A pause, the sound of a screwdriver. "That's not what I'm asking."
She put the cloth down. Outside the window, Millhaven was doing what it always did at this hour: closing up, settling in, becoming the kind of town that looked peaceful from a distance and felt, from the inside, like an argument you'd never quite finished.
"I know it's not," she said.
The shelving unit creaked as he tested the bracket. He was good at this — the patient, careful attention to broken things. She had always known that about him. It had seemed, ten years ago, like a quality that would make leaving easier. It had not.
"I wasn't ready to stay," she said finally. "That's all I can give you right now."
He considered that for a moment. "Okay," he said. Just okay. As if it were enough for now.