On April 13 I carried my lunch outside without opening it. Ellis caught up with me before I had chosen which way to walk, and for a moment we stood among people passing with sandwiches and folded papers, each waiting for the other to begin. I had spent the morning preparing a sentence about the summary. Now that he was beside me, it sounded less like a sentence than an accusation.
"We can't leave it that way," I said. "The six complaints are still in the cabinet, and my initials say I checked."
"I haven't asked you to leave them forever."
"You haven't given me anything else to call it."
We walked along the building, avoiding a patch of broken pavement. Ellis held his lunch sack by its rolled top. He said he wanted a chance to handle his own mistake instead of having it carried to Celia as though he had been caught stealing. I told him I had not called it stealing. He answered that people were not being careful about distinctions these days. Anything wrong could be made to look like everything wrong.
"Then make the distinction in a correction," I said. "Say what happened."
He stopped near a window displaying household goods neither of us looked at. "When Dean needed you at the shop, did I ask you for a written explanation? When you called before opening and said you couldn't get here, did I tell Celia to put it in your record?" He wasn't raising his voice. That made the words harder to step away from. "I covered because we worked together."
The three sick days I usually counted as his favor were not the whole account. There had been the late arrivals, the morning Dean could not leave a delivery unattended, the afternoon I had gone home with a headache and stayed to sort overdue bills. Ellis had absorbed those hours without making me stand before anyone and describe why my household was not managing.
"I know what you did for me," I said.
"Do you? Because you're talking like I'm a stranger who left a mess on your desk." He shifted the sack to his other hand. "I'm asking for the same consideration. Let me get my recommendation straightened out. Let me send the complaints myself."
I had intended to say that a recommendation should depend on the work. Instead I asked what he meant to do with the envelope. He said he would prepare an explanation, check the requests, and correct whatever needed correcting. Then he added that there was no reason to keep making copies of a bad summary once a proper one existed.
"Nothing gets destroyed," I said. The firmness surprised us both. "Not the complaints, not the summary, not the line I initialed. If there's a correction, it has to say there was a correction."
"Fine. I didn't say burn the place down."
"I'm not joking."
He looked at me for a while, then nodded. I should have asked when. I could feel the missing question as plainly as the lunch bag against my wrist, but asking it would have meant deciding what I would do if he failed. Instead I told him I would give him time to put his explanation together. He thanked me, and the gratitude made our agreement sound better than it was.
We ate on a low ledge without much appetite. Ellis talked about the sort of work the training transfer might involve, and I listened because changing the subject was part of the favor I had just granted. Back inside, I passed Celia's open doorway. She was reviewing a stack of forms. I had only to stop. I kept walking, with my unopened apple rolling against the bottom of the sack.
At home Dean was pulling old tacks from a chair frame over a spread newspaper. He asked why I was so quiet. I told him the counter had been difficult, which was true without being an answer. He set down the tool and said the acting assignment might be tiring before it became easier. I let him give my worry that harmless shape.
After supper he showed me a repaired seam that had come out better than he expected. I ran a finger along it and said it looked strong. He smiled, pleased that I had noticed. I wanted to tell him about the other thing I had agreed to hold together, but I would have had to begin with my initials. Instead I washed the plates while he went back to work, and neither man knew what I had withheld from the other.