I should go back. Yeah, he's going to know I wasn't taken straight home. He'll see the route on the app if he's tracking the vehicle. She looked at him. Is he?
I honestly don't know. He can. Whether he does, I have no idea. She nodded. She pulled out her wallet.
He shook his head. I've got it, Daniel. I've got it. He wasn't even sure why he said it. Old habit.
Something his father had taught him. You pay when you invite someone somewhere. And he had invited her here. She looked at him for a moment. Then she put her wallet away.
They drove back mostly in silence, the comfortable kind, which was strange given that they'd been strangers 2 hours ago. When he pulled up to the estate gate and punched in the code, he could see the house lit up through the trees. Richard's study light was on. That window was always the first one he'd learned to notice. The way employees eventually learn which lights to watch.
He pulled around to the main entrance. Lauren didn't get out immediately. Can I ask you something? She said, "Sure. When my father asks you tomorrow and he will ask, what are you going to tell him? " Daniel thought about it.
Genuinely thought about it. I'm going to tell him that you needed to clear your head after the event and I took you somewhere quiet and I brought you home safe. And if he presses, then I'll tell him the same thing again. She looked at him, searched his face for something he wasn't sure what. Whatever she was looking for, she seemed to find it.
Thank you, she said. It wasn't formal. It wasn't polished. It was just what she meant. Get some sleep, he said.
She got out of the truck. He waited until she was through the front door before he pulled around to the side of the property where Mrs. Patton met him with Amara, who had fallen asleep on the couch with her book open on her chest and woke up disoriented and grumpy and fell asleep again in the truck before they made it out of the driveway. Daniel drove home through Charlotte in the dark. I thought about what Lauren had said.
Wanting your own life isn't the same as being ungrateful for what someone gave you. He'd spent 5 years being grateful for what he still had. His job, his apartment, his daughter's health, his sobriety, his steadiness, and he'd mistaken the gratitude for contentment. It wasn't the same thing. By the time he parked and carried Amara inside and tucked her in and washed the two pie forks out of his jacket pocket, he'd accidentally taken from the diner, which told him he was more rattled than he realized it was close to midnight.