Tuesday, November 21. 131 days left.

He brought Theodore. This was a mistake.

He'd been thinking about it all weekend, and then all week, which was the problem with weekends... too much time, too little structure, and a dog who interpreted boredom as a personal challenge. She'd said bring the dog next time and next time was now and Theodore was on his best lead and his worst behaviour and the walk from the studio had taken twice as long as it should have because Theodore had to investigate every lamppost, gutter, and discarded chip bag on Duckworth Street like a forensic analyst with a nose for garbage.

Mollie was in the booth. Same seat. Same coat. Tea already ordered. She looked up when the bell rang and her face did something he hadn't seen before: her eyebrows lifted and her mouth opened and for one full second she looked like a person who had been surprised by something good and hadn't had time to hide it.

Then Theodore lunged.

Eleven pounds of terrier hit the end of the lead with the conviction of a dog three times his size, and Fayiz, who had been mid-step through the door, was jerked forward in a way that he hoped looked casual and knew didn't. Theodore had spotted Mollie the way a heat-seeking missile spots a target. He dragged Fayiz across the diner, claws clicking on the floor, tail going so fast it was a blur, and launched himself at the booth with the grace of a small hairy cannonball.

Mollie caught him. She caught him like she'd been catching small dogs her whole life, one arm scooping him against her chest, and Theodore went immediately still. His entire body relaxed. His eyes half-closed. He pressed his nose into the collar of her coat and sighed, actually sighed, a sound Fayiz had never heard him make for anyone, and settled into her like she was the one good cushion and he'd found it.

"Hello," Mollie said to Theodore. Her voice was different. Softer. The dry edge was gone, and underneath it was something unguarded that Fayiz didn't think she meant for him to hear. "Hello, you ridiculous thing. Look at your face. Look at this face."

Fayiz stood at the end of the table holding a slack lead and tried very hard to act like this was normal. Theodore did this with no one. Theodore tolerated Fayiz. Theodore actively disliked the landlord. Theodore had once growled at a child in a park. And now Theodore was curled against a woman he'd met eight seconds ago like she was the person he'd been waiting for.

"He doesn't do that," Fayiz said. "With anyone. He once bit a postman."

"Dogs like me," Mollie said, scratching behind Theodore's ear. Theodore made a sound like a broken radiator. "Animals, generally. People less so."

Fayiz sat down. Ordered pancakes. Theodore stayed exactly where he was, which was in Mollie's arms, which was not where he was supposed to be, but Fayiz said nothing because there was something about the picture, this woman in her black funeral coat holding his stupid little dog with both hands, like she was afraid of dropping him, that he wanted to remember.

Dottie brought coffee and looked at Theodore and looked at Fayiz and looked at Theodore again.

"Dogs aren't allowed," she said.

"He's very small," Fayiz tried.

"Dogs aren't allowed."

"He's extremely well-behaved."

Theodore chose this moment to lunge off Mollie's lap and land on the table and put both front paws in Fayiz's pancakes.

Dottie didn't blink. "Out," she said. "Both of you. Girl can stay."

"Both of..."

"Out."

Mollie was pressing her lips together so hard her chin was shaking. Fayiz could see the laugh trapped behind her teeth, could see the effort it took to hold it, and he thought: there. That's what her real face looks like. Right there. The second before she lets herself be a person.

He picked up Theodore, who still had syrup on his paws, and carried him to the door with as much dignity as a man holding a sticky terrier could manage. Mollie was already putting on her coat.

"You don't have to leave," he said.

"You owe me breakfast," she said, which was the closest thing to I'm coming with you that she was apparently willing to say.

• • •

Outside, the fog was doing its usual thing, which was turning St. John's into an oil painting someone had breathed on. The coloured houses on the hill disappeared into white at their rooflines. You could hear the harbour but you couldn't see it.

Theodore trotted ahead, syrup paws leaving faint sticky prints on the pavement, lead pulled taut, investigating the fog like it was personally offensive to him.

They walked.

Or Fayiz walked, and Mollie happened to be moving in the same direction, her hands deep in her coat pockets, her shoulders up around her ears against the cold. She was just there. Half a step behind, like she was still deciding.

"I don't really do walks," she said after a block.

"You're on a walk."

"I'm following the dog. It's different."

Theodore was investigating a lamppost with forensic intensity. Fayiz let the lead go slack and watched Mollie watch the dog and thought about the way she'd held Theodore in the diner. The way her whole body had changed. Her shoulders had dropped. Her jaw had unclenched. The sharpness that she carried everywhere had gone somewhere else. What was left looked like the beginning of something.

He wanted to ask. He didn't ask.

Instead he said, "You know, in Kerala, if a dog chooses you, it's considered good luck."

"Is that true?"

"Absolutely not. But Theodore doesn't know that."

She made a sound. A short breath through her nose, controlled, careful, a laugh she'd caught before it could fully escape. But it was there. He heard it.

They passed a cafe with a chalkboard outside that said FALL SPECIAL: PUMPKIN SPICE EVERYTHING and Mollie said "You know what I miss? Proper tea. Proper English tea from a proper English teapot. Not this..." She gestured at the chalkboard like it had personally wronged her.

"Pumpkin spice."

"Pumpkin. Spice. Who decided pumpkins needed to be in everything? Pumpkins are a decorative vegetable. They sit on porches. They don't belong in coffee."

"You feel strongly about this."

"I feel strongly about very few things. Tea is one of them."

He smiled. "What are the others?"

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked at Theodore, who was sniffing a drain with the intensity of a detective at a crime scene.

"Still working on the list," she said. Quieter now.

They walked another block. Theodore found a chip wrapper and had to be physically removed from it. The fog thickened. Somewhere behind it, a foghorn sounded, long and low.

Fayiz told her about a gallery he'd passed on Water Street that had a painting in the window so bad it had made him stop on the pavement and stare. "A seagull," he said. "With human eyes. Like a portrait, but of a seagull. With eyelashes."

"Was it for sale?"

"Three hundred dollars."

"For a seagull with eyelashes."

"For a seagull with eyelashes. And my paintings don't sell." He spread his hands, palms up. "This is the art world, Mollie. This is what we're dealing with."

And then it happened. The sound. The real one. A snort... sudden, uncontrolled, a sound she clearly had no say in, that broke out of her like something she'd been holding underwater and it kicked to the surface on its own. She clapped a hand over her mouth, too late, and her cheeks went pink from something that was definitely not the cold and she said "I didn't... that wasn't..." and he wanted to tell her it was the best sound he'd heard in eight months but he didn't, because she looked mortified, so he just kept walking like nothing had happened.

But he memorized it. Catalogued the exact pitch and break of it. Stored it the way he stored colours.

They circled back toward the diner. Theodore was tired, finally, his small legs slowing, his tail drooping from flag to half-mast. At the corner of Duckworth and Cochrane, Mollie stopped.

"I should go," she said. "Work."

"The dead will wait."

"They will. My boss won't." She knelt down.

Theodore padded over and pushed his head into her hand and she scratched behind his ear, slow, careful, and her whole face did the thing it had done in the diner. The armour came off. The sharpness went somewhere else. Her fingers were gentle against Theodore's fur and her eyes were half-closed and she was, for five seconds, a person who was just a person, touching a dog on a cold morning, and Fayiz stood there and watched her and knew he was going to draw this later. He was going to draw it because it was the truest thing he'd seen in months and he was a painter and painters drew true things, even when they'd forgotten how to paint them.

She stood up. Shoved her hands in her pockets.

"Thursday," she said.

"Thursday."

She left. He watched her go: the black coat, the messy hair, the fast walk, the coat, the way she turned the corner without looking back.

Fayiz looked down. Theodore looked up.

Her scarf was on the ground. Dark green, wool, slightly pilled. It had slipped off when she knelt down and she hadn't noticed. Or she had noticed. He picked it up and held it and it smelled like cheap tea and cold air and something else, something faintly floral, something that came from a person and not a product.

He thought about calling after her. She was only half a block away. He could still see her coat. He opened his mouth.

He closed it.

She'd left it. He knew the way you knew certain things, the way you knew a painting was finished, or a conversation was over, or a silence was the kind you weren't supposed to interrupt. She'd left the scarf on purpose. A green wool excuse to come back, in case she needed one, in case the contract on the napkin wasn't reason enough.

He walked home with Theodore at his heels and the scarf in his hand and the fog closing behind him like a curtain.

At the studio, he hung his jacket by the door. Put the scarf on the hook beside it. Green wool against a white wall. A colour in a colourless room.

Theodore jumped onto the one good cushion. Sighed. Fell asleep.

Fayiz stood in front of the grey canvas on the easel. Looked at it for a long time. Looked at the scarf on the hook. Looked back at the canvas.

He picked up a brush.

He put it down.

One hundred and thirty-one days.

☕︎