THE EXACT DATE(JULIAN'S POV)

Dessert had come and gone by the time my mother finally circled back to the thread she'd been holding since the appetizer course, patient, unhurried, the way a cat waits at a mouse hole it already knows leads nowhere else.

"Now that everyone's had a moment to eat," she said, setting down her fork with a precision that made the whole table straighten slightly, "I'd love to hear the story properly. From the two of you. How exactly did this begin?"

I felt Maya go still beside me, the only sign of anything at all, and understood in that half second that she was about to answer a question I hadn't fully prepared her for.

"It was a masquerade," she said, her voice even, pitched to carry just far enough and no further. "A charity gala, actually, for the children's hospital. Everyone wore masks. It felt like something out of a different century."

A soft murmur moved down the table.They sounded like they'd been handed exactly the kind of story they wanted.

"How romantic," Bianca said, pen already moving. "And you didn't recognize each other again for, what was it, months?"

"Masks work," Maya said, with just enough dryness that a few people laughed. "That's rather the point of them."

I felt myself relax, fractionally, right up until my mother set down her wine glass with a small, deliberate click.

"How extraordinary," Victoria said, "that neither of you thought to exchange names that night."

"It felt more interesting not to," I said, before Maya had to answer for both of us.

"Anonymity has its own kind of honesty. You're not performing for anyone's expectations. You're just two people, for one night, with nothing at stake."

"Nothing at stake." My mother repeated it slowly, turning the phrase over like she was checking it for flaws. "And when exactly was this gala, Julian? I don't recall seeing it on your calendar."

"It wasn't on my calendar. I went on impulse."

"You've never done anything on impulse in your life."

"There's a first time for everything, apparently."

I kept my voice light, though I felt the table's attention sharpen around us, Bianca's pen slowing, Richard setting down his own glass, even Renata going quiet beside Maya.

"Indulge me," my mother said. "The date."

I opened my mouth to deflect, and found, to my genuine irritation, that I couldn't. I'd spent seven months turning that night over in my memory so many times I could have recited the exact temperature of the room, the song playing when she stepped onto the balcony, the precise shade of gold in the mask she'd worn. The date was the one detail I'd never once let myself forget, because forgetting it had felt, somehow, like forgetting her.

"The eighteenth of May," I said.

The words left me before I'd fully decided to say them, and I watched something shift behind my mother's eyes, fast and precise.She was doing the arithmetic she already suspected the answer to.

"The eighteenth of May," she repeated. "And Maya, forgive me, but you're, what, seven months along now?"

"Victoria." Renata's voice cut in, quiet, careful. "This isn't really dinner conversation."

"I'm simply doing the math, dear. I was under the impression counting came standard with a hospital charity gala."

My mother's gaze never left Maya's face.

"The eighteenth of May. Seven months. That puts conception, doesn't it, almost exactly on the night of this gala. Which would mean the two of you conceived a child the very first night you met, at an event neither of you can produce a single photograph from, wearing masks specifically designed so that no one could later prove you were both actually there."

The table had gone entirely silent. Even the waitstaff seemed to have paused somewhere just outside the doorway, sensing, the way staff at these dinners always seemed to, exactly when not to enter a room.

I felt Maya's hand find my knee under the table, not gripping, just resting there, like she needed the contact to stay steady.

"That's quite a coincidence," my mother said softly. "Wouldn't you agree?"

"It's not a coincidence," I said. "It's what happened."

"Of course." My mother's smile was thin, polite, utterly unconvinced. "I only mean to say, Julian, that if I were reading about this in tomorrow's papers instead of hearing it at my own table, I imagine I'd find the timeline rather remarkable too. Wouldn't you, Bianca?"

Bianca looked up from her notepad, and for the first time all evening, something almost like reluctance crossed her face.

"I'd find a lot of things remarkable," she said carefully, "if I were writing about it. Which, for the record, I'm choosing not to. Tonight."

"How generous of you." My mother's eyes swept back to Maya, and something colder settled into them, the warmth she'd been performing all evening finally, entirely gone.

"I do hope, for both your sakes, that generosity holds. Because I find, in my experience, that stories built on convenient coincidences tend to unravel eventually. Usually at the worst possible moment for the people telling them."

She lifted her wine glass, the gesture almost casual, almost like a toast, and the whole table seemed to exhale collectively when she finally looked away, signaling the staff to bring out the next course.

Conversation resumed around us in scattered fragments, too bright, too fast, they were relieved that something dangerous had passed close by without touching them directly.

Beside me, Maya hadn't moved. Her hand was still on my knee, and when I glanced down I could see it trembling slightly.

Renata reached over at some point and refilled her water glass without being asked, a small, unremarked kindness that Maya didn't seem to fully register.

"You okay?" I asked, quietly, just for her, once enough of the table's attention had drifted elsewhere.

"I will be." She didn't look at me. She was watching my mother instead, the way you watch a storm that's passed close enough to feel but hasn't actually broken yet. "She knows."

"She suspects."

"There's a difference, but not as much of one as you'd think." Maya finally turned to me, and whatever composure she'd been holding onto through dinner had thinned enough that I could see straight through it to something raw and frightened underneath. "Julian, she's not going to stop. Not after tonight."

"I know."

"Then what do we do?"

I didn't have an answer, not one I trusted enough to say out loud in a room full of people who were still, technically, listening, and the silence stretched long enough that Maya looked away first, back down the table to where my mother sat, perfectly composed, perfectly patient, watching us both like a woman who had already decided how this story ended and was simply waiting for the rest of us to catch up.

Across the table, Bianca caught my eye, and mouthed four words. I felt it land somewhere behind my ribs.

I won't wait forever.