Chapter 6

Isla's team left at six.

She stayed.

There was still the ceiling anchor on the north end that wasn't sitting right — a fraction of a degree off, nothing anyone else would notice, everything she would notice every single time she walked into this room for the next three months.

She changed into the old trainers she kept in her bag for late nights, set up the ladder, and got back to work.

The twenty second floor was quiet.

She liked this part. Always had. Just her and the work and no one asking questions.

She was halfway up the ladder, wrench in hand, when she heard footsteps.

She knew before she turned around. She had learned his footsteps without meaning to — leather soles, deliberate, the kind that moved through a building like they owned it. Which they did. Which was the point.

She finished what she was doing. Came down the ladder.

He was standing in the doorway with his jacket off and his tie loosened and his hands in his pockets looking at the north wall.

The first time she had seen him look anything other than completely assembled. It was a small difference but it changed something about the room.

"You're still here," she said.

"So are you."

"I'm working."

"So am I." He looked at the column. At the preliminary markings she'd made that morning. "The positioning works better than I expected."

"I told you it would."

"You tell me a lot of things with a lot of confidence."

"I'm usually right."

Something moved in his expression. "Usually?"

"Once in a while I miscalculate the light." She picked up her tape measure. "Do you want something Mr. Cole or are you just standing on my floor?"

"Your floor?"

"For the next three months. Yes."

He looked at her. Then at the wall. Then back at her with the particular attention she had noticed he gave things he found genuinely difficult to look away from. She had been noticing it for days. She had been pretending not to notice it for approximately the same amount of time.

"Have you eaten?"

She blinked. "Sorry?"

"It's seven thirty. Have you eaten."

"That's—" She looked at him. "Are you offering to feed me?"

A pause that lasted slightly too long.

"There's a place downstairs," he said. "The kitchen staff stay late on Thursdays."

"The building has a kitchen."

"The building has everything."

She looked at him for a moment. At the loosened tie. At the man who had spent every single interaction with her being completely controlled and was currently standing on her floor at seven thirty on a Thursday asking if she had eaten like it was a normal thing to say.

"Okay," she said.

He nodded once. Turned. She followed.

She told herself it was just food.

The private dining room was small and quiet and completely empty.

One table. Good lighting. The kind of room that existed in buildings like this one — not for show, not for impressing clients, just for the people who stayed late enough to need it. A kitchen staff member appeared, took their order without ceremony, and disappeared.

Zachary sat across from her with his hands around a glass of water and looked at the table.

She looked at the room.

"This is nice," she said.

"It works."

"High praise."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth.

She picked up the menu even though the kitchen staff had already taken her order. Something to do with her hands.

"How long has the building had this?" she asked.

"Since I built it."

"And you use it—"

"When I stay late."

"Which is."

"Often."

She put the menu down. "Do you ever go home before nine?"

"Rarely."

"Is that by choice or habit?"

He looked at her. "Is there a difference?"

She considered. "Yes. Choice means you want to be here. Habit means you've forgotten you could be somewhere else."

He was quiet for a moment.

"Both," he said.

She nodded. Didn't push it.

The food arrived — simple, good, the kind of meal that required no performance. She ate. He ate. The silence between them was not uncomfortable. It was the kind of silence that existed between people who had run out of professional reasons to fill it and were finding out what was underneath.

"Tell me something about County Clare," he said.

She looked up. "Something like what?"

"Anything."

She thought about it. "In October the light changes. Everything goes gold before it goes grey. My mother used to say it was the land saying goodbye to the year." She paused. "I thought that was very dramatic when I was twelve. Now I think she was right."

He listened without moving. Without performing the listening — just received it.

"Your mother," he said. "Is she still there?"

"Yes. She'll never leave." Isla smiled. "She's made of that place. It's made of her." She looked at him. "What about yours?"

Something changed in his face. Brief. She saw it.

"She died," he said. "When I was nineteen."

"I'm sorry."

He nodded once.

She didn't say anything else about it. Didn't offer something soft or fill the space with sympathy. Just let it be exactly what it was.

He looked at her.

She looked back.

"What?" she said.

"Nothing," he said.

But it wasn't nothing. She could see it wasn't nothing. She filed it away in the place she kept things she didn't have names for yet, which was becoming a very full place.

They finished eating. He paid without discussion. She let him because arguing about it felt like it would break something in the room that she didn't want broken.

They walked back through the building to the lobby. His footsteps. Her trainers. The building quiet around them.

At the entrance she stopped. Pulled on her jacket.

"Thank you," she said. "For the food."

"You needed to eat."

"That's very practical."

"I'm a practical person."

She looked at him. At the loosened tie and the jacket over his arm and the man who had just told her about his mother in three words and meant all of them.

"Goodnight Mr. Cole."

"Goodnight Isla."

She walked out into the New York night.

She got home at nine thirty.

Stood in her Brooklyn apartment without turning the lights on. Looked at the ceiling.

Thought about a man who asked one question about Ireland and listened to the answer like it mattered. Who said she died about his mother with the particular economy of someone who has said it enough times to make it small and hasn't managed to make it small at all.

Who called her Isla. Not Ms. Simmons. Isla. Without her asking a second time.

"Interesting," she said out loud to no one.