What was eventually said

The light through the window had begun the slow shift to that flat, late-afternoon grey that settles over everything in October before the streetlamps come on. The clock — the clock, which had done such loyal work all afternoon — was now reporting half past four. Edith had sat for the better part of three hours in a borrowed yellow chair without finding either the wait tedious or the waiting itself complete.

Marta had not moved. She had a book she had not opened. Once, very quietly, she had cried, in a way that was not really crying — more like a steady, level exhalation that one might mistake for a draught. Edith had not looked over. Edith understood, even without looking, that to look would be to convert the not-quite-crying into something the woman would have to be embarrassed about later, and she did not want that for her.

Eventually Marta said: He won’t come, you know. The one you’re waiting for.

Edith took this in the way she had been taking everything that day: with attention, but not impatience. No, she said, slowly. I know.

Then —

I knew before I came in.

There was a long, considering quiet. Outside, very far away, a single bird — possibly the same bird as before, possibly its cousin, possibly a different bird altogether — made a single declarative noise. A car started somewhere down the street and then did not move.

Then why did you sit? Marta asked.

Edith thought about this for some time. She thought about it with the seriousness of a woman answering a question whose answer she had not, until that exact moment, known. Then she said:

Because there’s a difference between being kept waiting and choosing to wait. I wanted, today, to do the second one. I wanted to find out what it was like.

Marta nodded — slowly, the kind of nod that contains within it both an agreement and a small, far-away grief.

Edith bent down, took her shoes from beside the chair, and put them on, one at a time. She did not stand up immediately. She sat, shoes on, hands folded in her lap, looking at the room — the chair, the table, the kettle gone cool, Marta on the floor with her unopened book — for one last considering moment. Then she stood, picked up her bag, and walked out into the long bronze evening, the door closing behind her with the precise small click of a thing remembering, exactly, how to close.