CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT **SOPHIA**

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

**SOPHIA**

Margaret Sterling was nothing like Eleanor.

That should have been obvious going in but I'd spent enough time bracing for the worst that the reality of her took adjustment. She was small, quietly dressed, with Alexander's eyes and none of his early coldness. She'd chosen a restaurant in Capitol Hill, not the kind of place Eleanor would have selected, somewhere genuinely good without the performance of prestige.

She stood when I arrived and extended her hand and then seemed to reconsider and offered a brief embrace instead, which I accepted.

We sat.

"Thank you for coming," she said. "I know this is strange."

"It's fine." I meant it. "Alexander speaks well of you."

"He's generous." She looked at her menu without reading it. "I want to say something before we get into anything comfortable. I witnessed things during the period you were in Alexander's life in the other timeline. I didn't stop them. I told myself Eleanor was too powerful and it wasn't my place and both of those things were partially true and entirely insufficient."

She looked up. Direct. No performance in it.

"I'm not asking you to absolve me. I just wanted to say it cleanly before we tried to have a normal lunch."

I looked at her for a moment. "Alright. It's said. Now we have lunch."

Something in her shoulders released. "Yes. Good."

We ordered. The conversation found its footing naturally, which surprised me less than it might have six months ago. Margaret had spent twenty years being quiet in a loud house and had developed the particular skill of genuine listening that people who talk constantly never acquire.

She asked about the gallery with actual curiosity. Asked about London. Asked about Paris in May with a careful neutrality that told me Alexander had mentioned it.

"He's different," she said over coffee. "He has been since before I fully understood why. But now I can see it clearly."

"Different how?"

"Present." She considered the word. "Alexander spent fifteen years being brilliant and completely absent even when he was in the room. Now he's actually there." She looked at me. "That's because of you."

"It's because of him," I said. "I didn't change him. He decided to."

"The deciding came from somewhere."

"Maybe." I picked up my cup. "But I need it to be his. Not mine. I can't be responsible for someone else's becoming. Not again."

She understood that. I could see it land properly.

"No," she said. "You can't. And you shouldn't be." She paused. "He won't put that on you. He knows the difference now."

We stayed another hour. When we left she touched my arm briefly.

"I'd like to do this again," she said. "No agenda. Just lunch."

"Yes," I said. "I'd like that."

I walked back to the gallery in the March afternoon feeling lighter than the morning, which I hadn't anticipated.

********

**ALEXANDER**

She texted me after the lunch. *Your mother is good. Lunch again sometime.*

I read it three times.

Then: *Also she told me you used to build model cities in your bedroom until your grandfather made you stop. I want to hear about that.*

I called her. "She told you that?"

"In detail. Apparently you built an entire transit system from cardboard at age ten."

"That information was supposed to stay in the family."

"I am family adjacent." A pause where I could hear her smiling. "Tell me about the transit system."

"Sophia"

"Alexander."

I told her about the transit system. She listened without interrupting, which was how she listened to everything that mattered. When I finished she was quiet for a moment.

"You've always built things," she said. "Hotels, transit systems, sketchbook buildings. It's who you are."

"I built the wrong things for a long time."

"You're building the right ones now." Simply stated. Moving on. "Come over tonight. I want to show you the Paris layout."

"Business or personal?"

"Both. Bring the sketchbook."

I arrived at seven. She had the Paris floor plan spread on her kitchen counter, the Fontaine venue mapped out with her particular precise system of notes. We spent forty minutes on logistics, which artists went where, how the Nina Volkov collaboration would divide the space without either gallery losing its identity.

She was sharp and decisive and I contributed where I had something useful and stayed quiet when I didn't. That balance had developed naturally over weeks.

Afterward she rolled up the floor plan and poured wine and we moved to the sofa. She tucked herself against my side in the way she did now without commentary and I put my arm around her without making anything of it.

"Show me what you drew this week," she said.

I got the sketchbook. She went through it slowly, pausing at two pages.

"This one," she said, holding it up. A narrow mixed-use building, lots of natural light, something that connected interior and exterior in an unusual way. "This is serious."

"It's a sketch."

"Alexander." She turned to look at me. "I know serious work when I see it. I've spent five years identifying it in other people." She held the book up. "This is the real thing."

"I'm not an architect."

"You could study. Part time. There are programs." She said it the way she said things she'd already thought through properly. "You have the Tokyo consulting work. You have time. And you clearly have the instinct."

I looked at the sketch. Twelve years old with a notebook full of buildings. Fourteen when Eleanor threw them away.

"It's been twenty years," I said.

"So it's been twenty years. Start now." She set the book down and turned to face me fully. "You told me to keep going with the gallery when it was two rooms and three artists. I'm telling you to keep going with this."

I looked at her on the sofa, this woman who had rebuilt herself from nothing twice and knew exactly what she was talking about.

"Alright," I said.

"Just alright?"

"I'll look into programs this week."

She nodded, satisfied, and settled back against me. I pressed a kiss to her temple and she turned her face up and I kissed her properly, slow and warm, her hand against my chest.

When she pulled back she stayed close, looking at me.

"I've been thinking," she said.

"About?"

"You stay on the sofa when you're here late. It's a good sofa but it's still a sofa." She held my gaze evenly. "There's a key on the counter. If you want it."

I looked at the counter. A key on a simple ring, placed there deliberately, not casually forgotten.

Something shifted in my chest.

"Sophia."

"It's a key. Don't make it a monument." But her eyes were soft. "Just take it if you want it."

I got up and picked it up. Turned it over once. Put it in my pocket.

When I sat back down she was watching me with that clear expression she had when she'd decided something and was at peace with the decision.

I pulled her close and kissed her once, with full intention. She kissed me back the same way.

"Thank you," I said quietly against her mouth.

"Don't thank me. Just don't lose it."

"I won't lose it."

"Good." She settled against me again, her head on my shoulder, completely at ease. "Now tell me what program you're going to look at."

"I haven't looked yet."

"Start looking."

I picked up my phone and she watched the screen with me, making sharp observations about each option I pulled up, and we spent the next hour like that, planning two futures simultaneously, hers and mine and the one where they ran alongside each other.