PART 19:

“My mother will have cooked too much,” Victoria said. “That’s fine. She’ll ask you about your business. She researched electrical contractor pricing online. I know this because she mentioned it on the phone in a way that was supposed to sound casual. Also fine. She might say something that’s technically not wrong, but has an implication in it.

Victoria kept her eyes on the road. She does that. She’s working on it, but she does it. Victoria, he said, “What? I’ve met her. I’m not afraid of her.” A pause. I know. I just She exhaled. I want it to go well. It probably won’t be perfect, he said. I know. And that’s okay. I know that, too. She gripped the wheel slightly.

Knowing it and managing my nervous system about it are different things. Tell me something you actually want to talk about, he said, which was what he’d said at the restaurant, the first date, the thing that had broken open the performance. She glanced at him, almost smiled. I made an offer on the apartment, she said.

He turned to look at her. When? Thursday. The landlord countered. I countered back. We’re close. She kept her eyes on the road, but her mouth had done the thing it did when she was containing something. I’m buying it. The apartment. Our apartment, she said, and then like she’d heard it. I mean, I know what you mean, he said.

She glanced at him again. Is that okay? That I said it that way? Yeah, he said. It is. They drove for a moment in the comfortable quiet that they’d built, and the Connecticut trees went past, and she reached over without looking, and put her hand on his knee briefly, and then put it back on the wheel.

Catherine’s house was a colonial on two acres, white with dark shutters, the garden asleep under frost, a wreath on the door that had been put there by someone who cared about such things. They were led in by Catherine herself, who wore a dark gray sweater and had her hair down in a way that Victoria later described to Ethan as unusual for guests.

“Ethan,” Catherine said. She shook his hand and it was different from the hotel ballroom. The appraisal was still there because it was who she was, but the transaction was different. She was looking at him with something that approached genuine curiosity. “I’m glad you came. Thank you for having me. She looked between the two of them quickly, almost involuntarily, the way a parent looks at a child when they’re deciding whether they’re okay.

Then she led them inside, and the house was warm and smelled like something long cooked, and the table was set for three, and there was indeed too much food. It wasn’t perfect. 3 hours later, Ethan could have named the exact moments it wasn’t perfect. The comment Catherine made about the difference between owning and renting as a measure of stability that had a subtext he absorbed quietly and didn’t respond to.

The moment Victoria’s jaw tightened when her mother mentioned a mutual friend of hers and Marcus’ in a passing context that felt less passing than it was framed. The slight overcorrecting that Catherine did when she noticed she’d mistapped, filling the gap with warmth that was slightly too bright. It also wasn’t a disaster. Not close. Dinner went two hours.

Catherine asked Ethan about his business, and he told her what he told everyone. What what it paid, what it required, what he’d built, without apology, and without performance. And he saw the same thing he’d seen at the party, the faint recalibration in her expression when she got directness instead of the difference she was accustomed to.

She was not a woman who was comfortable being surprised, and being surprised seemed to be expanding her in small, incremental ways. He helped her clear the table, which she didn’t expect, and they stood at the kitchen sink for a few minutes while Victoria was in the bathroom passing dishes. And Catherine said without looking at him, “She’s different with you.

” He handed her a serving plate. “Different how less careful around me, she’s always been careful, like she’s managing me.” Catherine rinsed the plate. “With you, she just talks.” “She’s always been like that,” he said. I think. No, Catherine said. She wasn’t. Not always. A pause. I didn’t see that it was anything I’d contributed to until recently.

He didn’t feel the silence. She wasn’t looking for a response. She was saying something that needed to be said to someone. She’s my more complicated one. Catherine said. She always was. Lily asks for what she needs. Victoria figured out very young that the asking was going to be difficult and stopped doing it. She handed him a pot.

“That’s not entirely my fault, but it’s not entirely not my fault either.” He dried the pot and set it on the counter. “She’s doing better,” he said with the asking. Catherine looked at him. “I know,” she said. “I can see that.” A pause. “Thank you for being someone she can ask. She does the work,” he said. “She has help,” Catherine said and left it there.

Victoria came back and they finished the kitchen together, the three of them, in the particular close quarters of a small kitchen that required coordination. And at one point, all three of them reached for the same cabinet, and it was briefly chaotic. And Victoria said something sharp and accurate about the cabinet’s placement, and Catherine laughed.

Really laughed, the kind that Ethan recognized because he’d heard it in a shorter, realer version from her daughter. And the kitchen felt for that moment like a place where real things happened. Driving home in the dark, the highway unrolling under them, Victoria was quiet for a while. Then that was okay. It was, he said, she tried. She did.

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