“Ah,” Anneliese murmurs. “Dangerous adjectives.”
I hear the faint clink of glass, like someone setting something down.
“She is not temporary,” Anneliese continues. “You don’t rearrange your routines for temporary.”
Another pause.
“We met,” he says.
My heart lurches and my brain stutters. Is he really going to tell her about… that?
“Met?” Anneliese repeats.
“A few months ago. At a talk.”
Yes, yes, he is.
“When Matthias was presenting,” Anneliese says slowly.
“Yes.”
Her laugh is sharp this time. “Of course you did.” Silence for more than feels comfortable, and then she continues. “So, you met the woman, slept with her, and then she arrived with a child?”
I’m not sure how to prepare for this, like at all.
“It is not like that.”
“It is exactly like that,” she counters.
Silence stretches.
“I did not plan this,” Lenzin says finally.
“I know,” Anneliese replies, softer now. “You never plan the things that you’ve purposely avoided all your life.”
“Remind me to circle back to that, after this.” He sighs.
“What’s this?”
“You know that gift I have?”
That gift I have?
“Personally, no, but I have heard tales,” she laughs.
“Anneliese, I need you serious for just a moment.”
She’s quiet and then says, “You’re kidding me, right? You think this woman is pregnant, and you’re still contemplating throwing the plans we’ve made away on a woman who brings a battered child to your home, and is carrying another man’s baby? Lenzin, we had actual classes about this at boarding school. She’s a gold?—”
“I love you in the most platonic way a man could love a woman, but do not speak like that about her when you don’t know her.”
“She works in a bookstore and takes in foster children.”
“She works in a bookstore. TAs at the college where she is a year and a half away from defending. That sweet little girl is highly intelligent, a thinker, Anna. The same woman whonearly killed Lucy was the woman, Hildy, who survived until she made a plan and found her way out; she’s as brilliant as she is beautiful.” A pause. “Take away the education. Say she was at the lecture because she simply loved books, and fostered children because she loves them, and worked at the bookstore because again, she loves to read. I’d still be drawn to her.” Another pause. “Something changed in me that night. This isn’t me aspiring to be a painter, not a phase.”
Damn him.
“Well, I can’t argue that, but she has a child growing in.” She gasps. “You think it’s yours.”
