THE FLOWER GIRL BEHIND THE DOOR.

Andrew bought pajamas at a drugstore while Emily stood beside him in the flower-girl dress.

They were too big. Blue cotton pants with cartoon moons, a T-shirt from a different rack, and a pair of socks she didn't need but liked because they had dogs on them. He bought the socks without turning the package over to check the price. Then he checked the total twice at the register.

Emily noticed both things.

“We can put them back.”

“We don't need to.”

“You looked.”

He slipped the receipt into the bag. “Looking at a price doesn't mean you did something wrong.”

Their driver had dropped them at a modest hotel near Andrew's apartment. From there, they had walked across the parking lot to the drugstore. His uniform drew glances. The little girl in white drew more. Nobody asked, which made him grateful in a way he hadn't expected.

In the hotel room, Emily inspected the bathroom lock before she inspected the television.

Andrew stood near the dresser and let her look.

“It opens from inside,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I know.”

She said it sharply, embarrassed that he had heard. He nodded and unpacked the clothes without answering again.

While she changed, he ordered a pizza and called the apartment manager. His lease remained active. He could go back tomorrow, assemble the beds, and collect the kitchen things he had left boxed. No emergency favor was required, no grand rescue. He still had a home. He had nearly forgotten because for months everyone had called Vanessa's larger house their future.

He wrote three things on the hotel notepad: beds, groceries, night-light.

Then he crossed out night-light and put it first.

Emily emerged carrying the dress in both hands.

“Where do I put it?”

“On the chair.”

“It'll wrinkle.”

“That's fine.”

She laid it down carefully anyway. The gray stain looked smaller without the garden lights, but Andrew kept seeing it.

They ate pizza on towels spread across the bed. Emily picked off a mushroom he hadn't realized came on it. He apologized. She asked if she could have the crust from his first slice. For five minutes they discussed nothing more serious than whether hotel ice tasted different from regular ice.

Then she said, “I wasn't having a tantrum.”

Andrew put his slice down.

“Okay.”

“People will say I was.”

“Did someone say that to you?”

She worked a corner of the paper plate between her fingers. “Not in the room.”

He waited. The air conditioner clicked on, loud enough to give them both somewhere else to look.

“Vanessa said I was making everything harder. Before.”

“Before you went into the laundry room?”

Emily nodded.

“Tell me what you remember. You don't have to guess about anything.”

She had been near the garden doors, holding the basket. Vanessa had told her she needed to wait inside. Emily had asked whether she would miss her turn. Vanessa said someone would get her. Then, when Emily asked again, Vanessa had said she could come out when they were a family.

“Those exact words?”

“I think. When we were a family. Or after.”

“You don't have to make it exact.”

Andrew could feel his own hunger for a clean account. He wanted sentences he could repeat without qualification, proof that would make every adult who said calm down finally stop. But Emily was nine, tired, and trying to remember something frightening. He wouldn't turn her into a report because he was angry.

“Did you see somebody lock the door?”

“No. It was shut.”

“What happened when you tried to open it?”

“It moved a little. Then it stopped.”

She demonstrated with the hotel room's plastic spoon, moving it against her plate. A tiny scrape. Andrew asked her to stop only because the spoon was bending, then immediately wished he had explained that better.

“You're not in trouble,” he added.

“I know.”

But she didn't look as if she knew.

He got the notepad. “I'm going to write down what you told me so I don't get it mixed up later. Is that okay?”

She shrugged.

He wrote the time, the hotel, and her words as closely as he could. Beside the uncertain phrase, he wrote that she wasn't sure of the exact wording. He recorded that she hadn't seen the bolt being moved. He didn't put Vanessa's name beside an action Emily had not witnessed.

His phone lit up. Vanessa. Then Daniel. Then a message from someone asking whether tomorrow's brunch was still happening.

He turned the screen facedown.

The pizza box still held two slices. Andrew asked whether Emily wanted them saved for morning. She said breakfast pizza wasn't a real breakfast, then considered the hotel brochure advertising powdered eggs and changed her mind. He called the front desk to ask about a refrigerator. There was a small one beneath the counter, hidden behind a cabinet door he hadn't opened. Emily found it first and moved the bottled water aside. Together they folded foil around the slices. The task gave them something to finish successfully that night, without anyone needing to feel better on command. She wrote her name on one packet and his on the other.

Emily stared at it. “Are they mad?”

“Some of them may be.”

“At me?”

“You didn't cancel the wedding. I did.”

“Because of me.”

He moved from the chair to the edge of the bed. “Because something happened that wasn't okay, and I needed to stop. That's my decision. You don't owe anybody a wedding.”

She pulled the oversized sleeves over her hands.

“Even if they bought presents?”

“Even then.”

“What about the cake?”

“Especially the cake. A cake doesn't get a vote.”

She almost smiled. He let that be enough.

Later, while he hunted for a children's channel, she said there had been a knock. Not Andrew's knock. Earlier, while she was waiting.

He lowered the remote.

“Someone knocked on the laundry-room door?”

“Just once. Maybe with their hand. Maybe they bumped it.”

“Did they say anything?”

Emily nodded, frowning at the carpet. “I thought they said, 'Is somebody in there?'”