Jasna inherited a house in the village of Brijesce and a box of books that smelled of apples. She rented out the house but offered the books to the old reading room. Outside its door she found Omer, the carpenter, trying to raise a window stuck with paint. She was forty-three and had last seen him at her own wedding, where he had repaired a broken chair.
She was now divorced, and he was a widower. The neighboring women exchanged those facts before the two of them managed to say hello. Jasna brought coffee in a thermos. Omer declined sugar and asked whether she was staying all winter. She said she did not know yet. In the city she was waiting to hear from a publisher to whom she had offered a translation.
They worked on Saturdays. She copied out titles; he made shelves from boards rescued from a closed shop. When she suggested a coat rack with two large hooks, Omer said it needed at least ten. Jasna laughed: she meant his workshop, where her coat always ended up on a bag of sawdust. He continued measuring the wall.
One evening snow buried their car. They waited for a neighbor's tractor, eating crackers beside a heater. Omer admitted that two years earlier he had fallen in love with a woman who came from the city every Friday. On Sundays she would tell him the village was her true home. After summer she never returned. He did not resent her departure, only the way she had spent so long arranging cups as though she meant to stay.
Jasna put down her cracker. "I can't promise you a winter just to earn somewhere to hang my coat." Omer said he had never asked that. "You have, only without words," she replied. They heard the tractor before he could think of an answer. The following Saturday they worked quietly, leaving more space between their tables than they needed.
The publisher's offer arrived on Tuesday. She could work from home, but meetings required travel. She went to Omer with a schedule, not a suitcase. She said she wanted to try being with him, while keeping a place of her own and the right not to have work trips interpreted as abandonment. He studied the dates for a long time, then asked whether he could sometimes meet her at the station.
There were not enough chairs at the reading room's opening. Omer brought two from his workshop, and Jasna set the coffee on a new shelf. After the ceremony he showed her the coat rack he had made behind his own door. It had six hooks. "Guests have coats too," he said. Jasna hung up her wet coat, left her travel bag at her feet, and kissed him before he could promise anything.