The line goes quiet. Not empty. Not awkward. Full.
Then she says, “I talked to Diana.”
I stand straighter. “About the review?”
“About Paris.”
The word changes the room. I don’t speak too quickly.
“Tell me.”
“She loved the review,” Serena says.
“She said it is the best thing I have written.”
“She’s right.”
“You’ve become very agreeable from a distance.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
Her smile is in her voice now.
“I proposed something to her when I was still over there. A Paris-based trial. Six months to a year. European dining coverage, longer stays, more context, fewer parachute reviews. Same standards. Same aliases. Same fact-checking.”
My hand tightens on the island. “She agreed?”
“She did. Annoyingly fast, actually. It was almost like she had already thought about it.”
“She’s intelligent.”
“She’sdangerous.”
“Those often travel together.”
“They do,” she says.
I look toward the hallway, toward the room where the desk waits in the dark. “When?”
“Soon. I need to handle my apartment, the column structure, the practical things. But I’m coming back.”
The words arrive cleanly. I’ve wanted them for six weeks. I have not allowed myself to shape them too often because wanting becomes humiliation if it is not met. Now they are here, and I do not know what to do with the relief except stand very still and let it move through me without making a spectacle of it.
“I’m not coming back because you asked,” she says. “You didn’t ask.”
“No,” I say. “I did not.”
“I’m coming back because I want to. Because I’ve built a career that can expand toward Paris, and because the opportunity has presented itself in a meaningful way. I would have done it regardless.”
“I know.”
“No,” she says, and her voice lowers.
“You don’t get to say you know before I finish.”
Despite everything, my mouth curves. “Then finish.”
She breathes in once.
