Page 109 of The Dangerous Dance

"I know," I say. "I'll listen to all forty-five minutes."

He looks at me.

"Liam," I say. "I've been in this kitchen for four days. I have extensive capacity for forty-five minutes of information."

He gets up. He gets the food Mackenzie left, which is the elaborate kind because Mackenzie's food always is. He sets it on the table. He sits back down.

And he tells me about Marco.

And I listen.

And outside Ciarán does his rotation.

And the fig tree is bare in the garden.

And the house in Carroll Gardens is warm.

CHAPTER 30

Nadia

The at-home date is his idea, which surprises me.

Not because I didn't think him capable of the idea — I've revised most of my early assessments of him significantly in the last two months, including the ones about what he's capable of when he decides to do something. What surprises me is the specificity of it. He doesn't say I thought we'd have a nice evening or let's do something different tonight. He says, on a Thursday morning before he leaves for the compound: "Tonight. No briefings, no files, no Viktor. Just — tonight."

And he says it with the specific quality of someone who has been planning it and is now committing to the plan out loud, which means he's been thinking about it while also managing a war on two fronts and a vote and Marco and Declan and the four-now-two-man security detail and everything else that constitutes his current life.

"All right," I say.

"Seven," he says.

"I'll be here," I say, and then I remember I'm always here, which produces the expression at the corner of his mouth, and then he goes.

He comes back at six forty-five, which is earlier than seven, which means he left the compound before the day was entirely done rather than letting the day run until it was finished. I know what this costs — I've been in the operational rhythm of this house long enough to know the relationship between what time he gets back and what the day required — and the fact that he left early is its own kind of statement.

He has things.

Not elaborate things. Not the performed version of a date that announces itself through volume. He has a paper bag from somewhere that smells like bread and something warm, and a bottle of wine that he sets on the kitchen counter with the ease of someone who chose it because he knew it was good rather than because he needed it to perform goodness, and something wrapped in brown paper that he sets on the table and doesn't explain.

"What's that," I say.

"Later," he says.

"That's not informative."

"It's meant to be sequential. Bear with me."

I look at the brown paper package.

I look at him.

"Later," he says again, with the specific patience of someone who has made a plan.

I bear with him.

He cooks.

This is the second surprise, because in the operational rhythm of the house, cooking has been largely my domain — not because he can't, but because I've been here and he hasn't. Tonight he comes into the kitchen with the specific authority of someone who knows what they're doing in a space and does not require assistance, and he puts me on the other side of the counter with a glass of wine and he cooks.