He knew immediately there was no scarf. He typed back, "Sure, I'll be there at 8. " Her reply came back in 30 seconds. Thank you, Daniel. He put his phone face down on the table. He told himself this was professional courtesy.
He told himself this was nothing. He told himself a lot of things in those next 60 seconds. Then Amara came into the kitchen in her pajamas, hair everywhere, looking for cereal, and he got up and got it for her. And for a while, the ordinary weight of daily life pressed everything else flat. But later that afternoon, when Amara was at her friend's house and the apartment was quiet, Daniel found himself thinking about strawberry rhubarb pie, about an old diner on the east side of Charlotte, about a woman who'd asked the first person in a long time to talk to her like a person instead of a position.
He thought about his own question. What do you want? And for the first time in 5 years, he turned it on himself and didn't immediately have a well organized, practical answer ready. That was when he understood that Friday night had not ended at the estate gate. It had only just started.
The scarf didn't exist. They both knew it. Daniel knew it the second he read her text. Lauren knew it the second she sent it. But Monday morning came anyway.
And at 8:03, a silver BMW pulled into the Whitmore Logistics Fleetyard, and Lauren Whitmore stepped out in dark jeans and a plain jacket, looking nothing like the woman in the evening dress, and everything like the woman from the diner. Daniel was standing near the dispatch office with a clipboard he suddenly had no interest in. She walked straight to him, no hesitation. "I don't actually have a scarf," she said. "I know.
I just needed a reason. I know that, too. She looked at him steadily, like she was checking whether he was going to make it awkward or make it easy. He chose easy because the yard had 12 men in it, and at least four of them were already pretending not to look. "Walk with me," he said.
He turned toward the back lot where the newer trucks were staged for morning routes. She fell in to step beside him, away from the windows, away from the office where Larry, his assistant dispatcher, had the eyes of a man who reported things. I thought about what you said Friday night. Lauren said about my father. Which part?
That he loves me and doesn't see how those two things can work against each other. She paused. I've been trying to say that exact thing for 4 years and I couldn't find the words for it. Daniel kept walking. Sometimes it's easier to see from the outside.
He called me Saturday morning. She said he wanted to talk about the Heartley brunch. He'd already scheduled it Saturday for the following weekend. He told me about it like it was a meeting I'd agreed to. What did you say?
I said I had other plans. Daniel stopped walking. He looked at her. Did you? No.
She met his eyes, but I said it anyway. For the first time in 4 years, I said it anyway. That hit him somewhere he wasn't expecting. He turned and kept walking and didn't say anything for a moment because he needed a moment. How'd he take it?