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The dining room had sixteen chairs and Vanessa had never once liked any of them.
She stood in the doorway in a dress Rosa had pulled from storage, something navy and stiff at the collar, and stared at the table like it owed her money. Candles already lit. Name cards already placed. Somewhere, somebody had decided her seat went next to Adrian's, and somebody else had decided not to ask her first.
"You're staring at a chair," Adrian said behind her.
"It's a nice chair."
"It's the same chair it was last time you lived here."
"People change. Chairs change."
He didn't answer that. He just held out his arm, stiff and formal, like he was walking her into a court hearing instead of dinner.
"I can walk."
"It's for the room, not for you."
"Oh, so it's a performance."
"Everything here is a performance."
She took his arm anyway. It felt strange, warm through the suit sleeve, and she decided not to think about that part.
***
Director Hale arrived at exactly eight, the way he always did, like a man who considered punctuality a form of power. He was tall, silver at the temples, with the kind of smile that made you check your pockets afterward.
"Vanessa." He took her hand like it was something fragile. "It's been too long."
"Has it?"
"Two years, I believe."
"Feels shorter."
His smile didn't move. "Doesn't it, though."
He took the seat across from her, between two men she didn't recognize and one woman who hadn't looked up from her phone since arriving. Victor sat at the head of the table, already talking numbers with someone from the eastern division. Adrian sat beside her, unreadable as furniture, which she was starting to suspect was a skill he'd practiced.
The soup came out first. Vanessa picked up the wrong spoon, caught herself, and swapped it under the table before anyone noticed. Adrian noticed.
"Wrong spoon," he murmured.
"I know."
"You've had this soup before."
"I've had better things to think about than spoons."
"Clearly."
She kicked him under the table. Not hard. He didn't even flinch, which was almost worse.
Dinner conversation drifted the way it always had at this table — budgets, assignments, somebody's cousin getting promoted somewhere nobody cared about. Vanessa nodded along and said nothing, watching Hale instead.
He asked about her, eventually. Of course he did.
"And how are you finding things, being back?" His eyes were pleasant. His voice was pleasant. Everything about him was deliberately, professionally pleasant.
"Educational."
"I imagine the outside world was quite the adjustment."
"You could say that."
"And now you're adjusting back." He tilted his head slightly. "Must be strange. Coming home to find everything's changed."
"Has it changed?"
"Oh, you'd be surprised."
He said it lightly. He always said things lightly. But something in it made the back of her neck prickle, and she felt Adrian go very still beside her, the way he did right before a mission, when his whole body turned into a listening device.
"Speaking of coming home," Hale went on, turning to Victor, "I'd hoped Miriam might join us tonight. I do enjoy her company."
The table didn't react. Victor didn't look up from his plate.
"She's away," Victor said. "Lab business."
"Still? That's quite the trip." Hale smiled at his wine glass. "What exactly is she working on, out there?"
"Classified," Victor said, the way he said most things that meant drop it.
"Of course." Hale's gaze drifted, almost absently, toward the far end of the table.
Toward the empty seat.
Toward the place card that still read Miriam Sterling, set and folded, because nobody had told the staff not to.
He looked at it a second too long.
Not a glance. Not a passing check of an empty chair at a dinner party. A held, measuring look, the kind a man gives something he's trying to decide what to do with.
Vanessa's spoon stopped halfway to her mouth.
Beside her, Adrian's hand, resting on the table, had gone rigid.
Then Hale blinked, smiled, and turned back to his wine like nothing had happened at all.
"Lovely vintage, by the way, Victor," he said. "You'll have to tell me where you found it."
