The First Dinner

The first Thursday dinner lasted fourteen minutes.

She arrived at La Rouge. She sat down. She looked at the menu. Damien ordered a bottle of wine. She ordered nothing. She asked him one question, which was how his week had been. He started to answer. He said the word "Vanessa" in his second sentence. She stood up, put her napkin on the table, and walked out.

He did not chase her.

She liked that he did not chase her.

The second Thursday, she stayed for forty-seven minutes.

They did not talk about Vanessa. They did not talk about the past. They talked about a book. The Remains of the Day, which she had been rereading because it was the only novel she had brought with her from London. He had read it. He had hated the ending. She had loved the ending. They argued about it for forty minutes, and by the time dessert came, she was laughing once. Not a real laugh. A half one. But it escaped her mouth before she could stop it, and Damien looked at her like a man watching the sunrise after a long night.

She left the restaurant and did not speak to him for a week.

On the third Thursday, she let him tell her about the Aria House. Not bragging. Just facts. It had been his mother's idea originally, two years ago. He had wanted to name it after Aria then, as a kind of penance for a woman he thought was dead. Elena had told him not to. Elena had said, "Do not put her name on a building until you have earned the right to say it." So the project had sat unnamed for two years, and he had worked on it anyway, and funded it, and sat on the board.

Last month, after his mother told him Aria was alive, he had put her name on it the same day.

"How many women are living there now?" Seraphina asked.

"Thirty-one. With forty six children between them."

"How is it funded?"

"Me. A small amount from private donors. No government money. I did not want it to be subject to political cycles."

"The women."

"I do not know any of them. That was a condition I set. Anonymity. I pay for it. I do not go near it."

"Why?"

He looked at the candle for a long moment.

"Because I did not want it to be for me."

She felt something soft open in her chest. She squashed it immediately.

He walked her to her car afterward. Did not touch her. Did not ask to touch her. Stood a respectful distance away while the driver opened the door.

"Next Thursday," he said.

"Next Thursday."

The fourth Thursday, he was ten minutes late.

She almost left. She was standing up with her coat half on when he walked in, looking winded, his hair wet from the rain, apologizing before he even reached the table.

"I am sorry. I am so sorry. There was a car accident on Fifty-Seventh, and I got out and walked."

"Damien."

"I know I am late. I know what late means to you. I know what rain means to you. I am sorry."

She sat back down.

She studied his face.

He remembered.

He remembered the rain.

"Take off your coat," she said quietly.

He did.

They ate.

That night, at the end of the dinner, when he walked her to her car, she let him touch her arm. Not a hug. Not a kiss. Just his hand on her elbow for the time it took for the driver to open the door.

Her skin burned where he had touched her.

She sat in the back seat on the way back to The Plaza and pressed her hand flat against the spot where his hand had been and told herself she was not feeling anything.

Her phone buzzed.

Text from Lucas.

"How was dinner?"

She typed back: Fine.

She deleted it.

She typed: He remembered the rain.

She deleted that too.

Finally, she sent: Long week. Coming home to London for a few days. Miss you.

Lucas wrote back three minutes later.

"Miss you too, Sera. Luna asks about you every night."

She stared at the text for a long time.

Luna asks about you every night.

Six words. A sentence with enough weight to break her.

She thought about her daughter. The way Luna slept with one hand under her cheek like a tiny adult. The way she asked about her mother the moment her eyes opened in the morning. The way she had started saying Mummy with a specific lilt that Seraphina had begun to hear in her head in the middle of meetings and press conferences.

She put the phone down and looked out the window at a city she was starting to remember how to love.

And for the first time since she had walked back into New York, she was not sure whether the softening in her chest was strength or weakness.

She was not sure whether it mattered.