Chapter 8: Dinner for Three plus a Grandmother

Marianne Vale had the same smile as her brother and none of his patience. She opened the door on Saturday evening and looked me up and down like a customs officer and said "so you're the one who ruined my brother's sleep schedule."

"Mari" Anthony groaned behind me.

"I'm complimenting him. Come in. Dinner's in twenty minutes and I've already put three people on dish duty."

I walked in clutching the bottle of wine I had bought from the wrong aisle. The key was in my pocket. I hadn't been able to leave it in my dorm which told me everything I needed to know of the state of my mind. It clinked every time I moved so I spent ten minutes walking like a man trying not to wake a baby.

The apartment smelled like garlic. Anthony squeezed my hand and gave me a tiny hopeful smile and the guilt opened in my stomach like a trap door.

"Relax" the system said cheerfully. "Target arrives in four minutes."

"I hate you" I thought.

"Noted."

The doorbell rang at 7:02. I stood in the middle of the living room preparing myself for Lucas Hale in a black shirt with his dangerous eyes and his someone who was not a friend. What walked through the door was a very small very old woman in a plum coloured coat leaning on a cane with a silver handle that looked like a duck. Lucas followed her in holding her purse.

"Everyone, this is my grandmother, Odette Hale" he said. "Be nice, she bites."

"I do not." said Odette and rapped her cane on the floor. "I nibble. Where's the food?"

Marianne burst into delighted laughter. I stood frozen staring at the man who had said not a friend in a voice like a locked door and then shown up with his grandmother. Lucas looked at me over her silver head, perfectly neutral and the corner of his mouth twitched. I wanted to kill him with my whole heart.

---

Dinner was a disaster, and I say that as a man who once set a microwave on fire.

Marianne had laid out the seating like a general. Anthony sat on my left with his knee pressed warm against mine. Lucas sat on my right. Odette sat across from me and watched me eat like a hawk deciding about a mouse.

"So" said Marianne, passing the potatoes. "What do you do, exactly?"I'm in economics."With Lucas?"We share a lecture," Lucas said smoothly. "He sits behind me. He takes very detailed notes. About me."

Anthony choked on his water. I stabbed a potato so hard it flew off my fork and landed in the salad.

"He's joking" I said.

"I never joke" said Lucas, and under the table his boot slid against my ankle.

I put my fork down carefully. Anthony's knee was on one side, Lucas's calf on the other and I felt like a sandwich in a hostage situation. Anthony slipped his hand into mine. A second later a large warm palm landed on my other knee and I jumped so hard the table rattled.

"Everything all right?" Marianne asked.

"Yes. Great. Potatoes."

Lucas's thumb moved in a slow circle just above my kneecap. His face stayed completely calm as he asked Marianne about her wedding venue in a voice so reasonable I wanted to scream. The palm slid higher.

"Affection," the system said, in tones of awe. "Thirty-three percent."

"Stop helping" I thought.

"I am not helping. I am narrating."

Across the table, Odette set down her fork.

"You're thin" she said.

Everyone looked at her. She was looking at me.

"I'm sorry?" I said.

"You're thinner than you were." Her eyes were bright and sharp and pale grey, just like her grandson's. "Last time I saw you, you cleaned your plate like a starving dog. Three servings of my pie. Now you're pushing a pea around."

I looked down. I was, in fact, pushing a pea around.

"Nana" Lucas said quietly.

"I'm making conversation." She took a sip of wine. "He also had a scar, here." She tapped her chin with one knotted finger. "Little white thing. He said he fell off a roof."

My hand went to my chin on its own. It was smooth. Under the table, Lucas's hand had gone still on my knee and I felt every muscle in his fingers pull tight.

"Maybe I'm thinking of someone else" Odette said mildly, and returned to her potatoes.

Nobody spoke for a long second. Then Marianne's fiance announced that the lamb was burning, and the room dissolved into chaos.

---

I escaped to the kitchen to help with the dishes, which was cowardly and I did it anyway. I stood with my hands in hot water staring at the fogged window until a cane tapped across the tile behind me.

"You wash like a boy who's never washed a dish" Odette said.

She had come in alone, leaning on the counter, studying me with the same unhurried look as at the table, with no one else to perform for.

"Mrs. Hale" I began.

"Odette. I'm too old for Mrs. Dont talk. I'm going to say something, you're going to listen, and then I'm going to eat Marianne's tiramisu."

I shut my mouth.

"My grandson told me about a Tuesday" she said. "Three weeks ago, in my kitchen, at two in the morning. I have never seen that boy so frightened, not when his father left, not when he broke his arm. He sat at my table and said, Nana, I think I loved someone who wasn't real."

My throat went dry. The water ran on over my hands, forgotten.

"I don't know who you are, child" Odette said, so softly I almost missed it. "But you are not the boy I met in March. I have buried a husband and two sisters, and I know what it looks like when somebody leaves a room and somebody else walks in wearing the same face."

Down the hall, Marianne was laughing, and someone clinked a glass.

"I won't ask what happened." She picked up her cane. "But he's been looking at you since he walked in, and it is not the look of a man who hates you. Be careful with him. That boy's heart has been broken once, and he will not survive a second time."

She patted my cheek, once, gently, and walked out. I stood at the sink with my hands shaking in the water, and the system said nothing at all.