Lila was watching him. Not with the sharp, assessing look she wore at the office. Something gentler. Something that made him want to keep talking, which was a feeling he didn’t recognize.
“How old were you?”
“Nineteen.”
“I was thirty-one when my dad died.” She set her glass down. “You’d think it would be easier when you’re older. That you’d have more tools to deal with it. But it’s not. It’s just a different kind of impossible.”
“The impossible part doesn’t change. Just the shape of it.”
She looked at him for a long moment. The string lights on the deck had come on, casting everything in a warm, uneven glow. The fishermen were getting louder. The tide was going out, pulling at the pilings beneath them.
“You know what I miss most?” she said. “The boring parts. Not the big moments—the birthdays and holidays. The boring parts. Him at the kitchen table, doing a crossword. The sound of his truck in the driveway. The way he’d leave his reading glasses everywhere, and my mother would find them in the refrigerator or the laundry basket or balanced on the dog’s head.”
“You had a dog?”
“Enormous golden retriever named Captain. My father named him. He said every house needs a Captain.”
“What happened to Captain?”
“He died about a year after Dad. I think he just—gave up.” Her thumb worked at the hole in her sweater cuff. “I haven’t gotten another dog. Haven’t been able to.”
“Why not?”
She was quiet long enough that he thought she wouldn’t answer.
“Because then I’d have to admit that this is my life now. The empty house. The crossword nobody’s doing. The driveway that only has my car in it.” She finished her wine and set the glass down with precision. “Getting a dog means accepting that the people who used to fill up the space are gone. And I’m not ready to accept that.”
The fishermen erupted in laughter. The bartender dropped a glass. The ordinary sounds of a bar on a weeknight, carrying on around two people who were sitting very still.
Ronan reached across the gap between their seats and covered her hand with his.
She looked down at his hand. At her hand underneath it. She didn’t pull away.
“This is a terrible idea,” she said.
“Probably.”
“We barely know each other.”
“Also true.”
“And you’re investigating my entire world.”
“That part’s definitely complicated.”
She turned her hand over beneath his. Palm to palm. Her fingers laced through his, slow and deliberate, like she was making a decision one knuckle at a time.
“Buy me another glass of wine,” she said. “And tell me something true. Something that’s got nothing to do with falsified surveys or shell companies.”
“Like what?”
“Anything. Your favorite food. The worst movie you’ve ever seen. Whether you’re a morning person.”
He flagged the bartender. Ordered her wine and himself another beer he probably wouldn’t drink.
“Pad Thai,” he said. “From a place in Bangkok I can’t pronounce. The worst movie I’ve ever seen is a tie between three different action films where they got the weapons wrong. And I’m whatever kind of person wakes up at five a.m., whether he wants to or not.”
“Military habit?”
