"I was not entirely right either." He looked up. "The way I said it. It was not —" He stopped. Considered. "You are right that you do not answer to me. I know that. I let the hour and the worry get ahead of the point I was trying to make."
Elizabeth looked at him for a long moment.
Eight years, she thought. Eight years of deciding who he was and filing it and not reopening the file, and here he was in their kitchen at six in the morning apologising for a thing he had not entirely done wrong, and she did not know what to do with that except sit with it.
"We are both tired," she said.
"Yes."
"Go on your run."
The corner of his mouth moved. Just slightly.
"There is coffee," she said. "When you get back."
He looked at her. She looked back. Something passed between them that was small and careful and not nothing.
"Thank you," he said.
He put on his shoes at the door and went out into the early morning.
THIRTEEN
IT TOOK ABOUT TWO DAYSof persistent persuasion, but Elizabeth agreed to a second date with Daniel. He had been kind on the first, and she felt a measure of guilt at the thought of putting him off after he had driven her home when he did not have to.
That was the honest version of it. After the first date, Daniel had texted the next afternoon to say he had enjoyed himself and hoped she had got home safely. She had replied that she had. He had written back the following day asking if she was free that weekend, and Elizabeth had already made up her mind before she finished reading it. It felt like the right thing to do — to give someone a second chance who had shown her, without being asked, that he could be considerate. To say thank you in the only way that made sense.
So she had said yes. And told herself it was just dinner.
When the day came, the first hour had been fine. The same ease as before, the same good conversation, the same sense that he was a decent person making an effort. She had relaxed into it. That had been her mistake.
When the evening ended he offered to drive her home again and she accepted for the same reason she had the first time. He had offered. It seemed unkind to refuse. She had no reason not to trust him.
They were two streets from the restaurant when his hand moved from the gear stick to her thigh.
She looked down at it. Then at him.
"Daniel."
"You have been great company," he said. Eyes on the road. The easy, unbothered tone of someone who expected this to go a particular way.
"Move your hand."
He did not. He slid it higher instead, and when she pushed it away he reached across and his hand moved to her chest and she caught his wrist and held it and said: "Stop."
He stopped. He sat back. He made a sound, low and dismissive, the sound of someone who found her response unreasonable, and then his hand moved toward her face and she caught it a second time and this time she did not hold it. She slapped it away.
The car was silent.
"Pull over," she said.
"Elizabeth —"
"Pull over, Daniel. Now."
He pulled over. She picked up her bag, opened the door, got out and closed it behind her and walked to the end of the block without looking back. She stood under a streetlight with her hands shaking in the way hands shook when they had been required to be very still and were now catching up with themselves.
She reached for her phone and saw that Darcy had called. The timestamp put it right in the middle of the drive, right around the moment Daniel had decided what kind of person he was going to be. She stared at it for a second.
