Anna tilted her head. "That's not what's got you sitting here drinking at one in the afternoon."
"No."
"So what is it?"
The restaurant was empty except for them, the lunch rush cleared out, the afternoon settling into that weighted silence before dinner prep started. He could hear the ice machine cycling in the back. A car passing on the street outside. His own thoughts, louder than either.
"I sat in my car for ten minutes after the meeting," he said. "Couldn't drive. Just sat there trying to figure out what happened. Three hours, Anna. I've known her for three hours and I'm here talking to you about her like she's..." He stopped. Started again. "I don't do this."
"I know you don't."
"I've dated. You know I've dated."
"I know you've gone through the motions with women who were perfectly nice and never made you sit in parking lots."
Jake looked at her. Anna looked back, patient, with the authority of someone who'd earned the right to say hard things.
"What do you want me to tell you?" she asked.
"I don't know. That I'm being ridiculous. That three hours doesn't mean anything. That I should focus on the case and stop acting like a teenager who just discovered girls exist."
"Is that what you want to hear?"
"It's what makes sense."
Anna came around the counter. She pulled out the chair at the small table by the window, the one she kept for conversations that mattered, and sat down. Jake picked up his beer and joined her.
"You know how long it took me to know about George?" she said.
Jake shook his head. He'd heard about George, Anna's husband, dead fifteen years now. Heart attack at fifty-two, gone before the ambulance arrived. He'd seen the photos on the wall behind the register. But he'd never heard this part.
"Four hours," Anna said. "We met at a dance at the Greek Orthodox church. My mother dragged me there because she was convinced I was going to die alone if I didn't start meeting nice Greek boys. George asked me to dance and four hours later I told my mother I was going to marry him."
"What did she say?"
"She said I was being dramatic." Anna smiled at the memory. "I said I'd never been less dramatic in my life. I married him eight months later. Thirty-one years, until the day he died." She reached across the table and put her hand over Jake's. "Sometimes you know. It doesn't make sense and you can't explain it and everyone tells you you're being crazy. But you know."
Jake turned his hand over, held hers. The bones felt fragile under papery skin, but her grip was strong.
"What if I'm wrong?"
"Then you're wrong and you move on. You've survived worse." Anna squeezed his hand once and let go. "But I've watched you keep people at arm's length for fifteen years. Nice women. Good women. Women who would have been fine. And you never once came to my restaurant at one in the afternoon to tell me about any of them."
She stood, collected his empty bottle.
"Bring her here," she said.
"What?"
"This prosecutor. Emily." Anna turned around. "Bring her here. Tomorrow, next week, whenever. I want to see her."
"You want to meet her."
"I want to see her. How she moves, how she talks, how she looks at you when she thinks nobody's watching." Anna leaned on the counter. "I've been feeding you for twenty years. I think I've earned the right to inspect."
Jake laughed. "Inspect."
"That's what I said."
