Primo is in a gorgeously redone Victorian house. Steven and Louisa’s reservation is in the formal dining room, at a small table near the window, where they can look over the wildflower garden and the greenhouses. Beyond those, farther from the main road, are the acres of farmland that make up the farm-to-table part of the equation. The mere act of stepping onto the wide-planked front porch, where tasteful jars of flowers sit on floating shelves above reclaimed picnic tables, puts Louisa at peace. The whole setup makes her want to move to the country and host dinners for poets and artists in flowing homespun clothes. While they wait for their table they make their way to the back bar for a cocktail. Steven has a Spanish Gin Tonic and Louisa an Aperol Spritz. By the time the hostess—supermodel willowy, beautiful enough for New York but too nice for it—finds them to tell them their table is ready they are both a little buzzed. (Aperol Spritzes are no joke.)
Their waiter, Thomas, who has a soul patch, really good posture, and an attitude that says he’svery seriousabout the food he’s going to bring them, goes over the specials. They order a bottle of Henri Bourgeois Sancerre. When Thomas has opened the bottle and poured a bit for Steven to taste, and when Steven has given his approval and Thomas has filled both glasses, Steven and Louisa look at each other for a long moment.
“Well, cheers,” says Louisa, finally. Their glasses go tinkagainst each other. “I’m glad you’re here.” She means it. Matty’s face when he greeted his father: it was enough to break her heart. Louisa has been here all summer, but she hasn’t beenhere here—she blinked and missed the fact that Matty was growing and changing and falling in love.
“Me too,” says Steven. “But. Or,and. We need to talk, for real. Right? We have a lot to talk about.”
“We do,” says Louisa. She puts down her drink and folds her hands on the table.
“I know we’ve had some disagreements over the money.”
“That’s putting it lightly.”
“Do you want to go first on the specifics, or should I?”
“You.”
“Okay. What hurt methe most...” He pauses, and Louisa is surprised to see that his eyes are damp. He takes a deep breath, begins again. “What hurt me the most when I brought up the money is that you didn’t believe in me enough to give me a chance. You wouldn’t even discuss putting down the Emergency Fund as an investment toward All Ears. As an investment toward me. You wanted it for the future of the house, when that came up. But what aboutmyfuture? Which is your future too. I mean, All Ears is probably going to sell in the next two or three years. We’ll have that money back a few times over. Why wouldn’t you entertain the idea of investing in me?”
“Ihaveinvested in you,” Louisa says. “I’ve invested in you for such a long time. After I gave up the Reed job I never even considered positions that would take you out of New York—especially once you started in podcasting. Do you know how hard it is for a professor to confine herself to a single geographical area? I’ve published far less than other professors my age”—she thinks of Franklin, with his seersucker and his sweet tea; she thinks, basically, of everyone but her—“partly because your job takes up so much time. I’ve juggled and backflipped my way through the last five years so you could get All Ears off the ground. I’m behind on my book because I invested my time in you.That’sbeen my investment, Steven! That was me investing in you. Don’t you see?”
“I know that, Louisa. You know I know that. But this time I needed a different kind of investment. And when I tried to broach that with you, you didn’t even give me a chance.”
Laughter, the tinkling of glasses from the other rooms. Thebest restaurants give you a beautiful setting, a strong cocktail, and space to think. Thomas arrives to take their order. They are going to share the chicken liver mousse and the oysters two ways (which two? She doesn’t know! But it’s Primo, so both ways will be fantastic). Louisa orders the steelhead trout with butter-poached lobster and Steven orders the grilled sturgeon. After she watches Thomas’s back disappear through the doors of the dining room Louisa rounds up every square of her obduracy, every scrap of pride and stubbornness, gathers them together, and stuffs them where the sun don’t shine. The time for honesty is now.
“You’re right,” she says. “You are right. I didn’t want to invest the money in the company.”
Steven grimaces. “I know. But why not?”
She sighs, plays with the napkin in her lap. Why not indeed? “It’s complicated, but let me try to explain it. Ididn’tsee it as an investment in you, not the way you’re seeing it, or the way you saw it earlier in the summer. I mean, you wanted to useourEF to float the business—when, like I said when we talked about it, there are so many other ways for a business to get money. It took us so long to save that money. And we might need it. My dad’s care is going to cost so much—the house...” The thought veers off trail and she stays quiet for a moment before she retrieves it. “There are so many things that qualify as emergencies. And I didn’t think a business loan was one of them. I mean, look, ultimately you were able to get it from Aggie, so, see therewereother ways—”
“You say that now,” Steven points out accurately. “But at the time that’s not how you felt about Aggie’s money at first.”
The appetizers arrive, and that gives them something else to concentrate on for a few minutes: sauce, slurp, sip. But yeah, Steven is right. Two oysters in, Louisa continues, “At the time, I was just mad. I was mad about everything. I was mad about my dad being so sick, and mad about the fact that you got all this time to concentrate on your job while every day I was getting more andmore behind on my book . . . and you didn’t even realize what that meant for me.” She tries to do book math to calculate the pages, but the cocktail and the wine are making the numbers swim in her mind. “I think I have like—I don’t know. I havea lotof pages left. So many pages, Steven.”
Steven says, “I know you do. At least from now until when we go home, I can take the kids on an outing or something every day while you work, to give you a few dedicated hours a day. Would that help?”
“Yeah. Yes, that would help a lot.”
“And when we get back, we’ll figure out more ways to split the time until school starts, because when the kids’ school starts yours also does. We’ll figure it out, I promise.”
Louisa squints at him. “You mean it?”
“Scout’s honor.” Steven and his brothers were all Scouts, so she takes him at his word.
“Thank you,” says Louisa. She eats her final oyster. “And by the way. You never told me what the catalyst for coming when you did was.”
“Hang on. I can show you.” Steven reaches in his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper. “We have this missive to thank for it.”
“What’s that? Is that a letter? Is it an Abigail letter?”
“It’s not a letter. It’s an email from Matty’s email.”
“Mattysent you an email?”
“Abigail did,” says Steven. “From Matty’s phone.” He reads aloud:
Dear Dad,
