She tilted her head slightly. "That doesn't sound like a good night to me. " "It got better," he said. She held that for a moment. "Yeah," she said softly. "I think maybe it did. " That's when Marcus looked up and saw the shadow fall over their table.
Not the waitress, not another customer. Vivien Bennett standing at the edge of their table, perfectly composed, one hand resting lightly on the back of an empty chair. Up close, she was more formidable than she'd looked from across the room. She was probably 70, but she moved like someone who had decided that age was mostly a suggestion. Silver hair, precise and deliberate.
A string of pearls that Marcus suspected were real. Eyes that were calm and absolutely completely calculating. She looked at Clare first. Then she turned those eyes on Marcus, and Marcus, who had faced repossession notices and bill collectors, and a landlord who pounded on his door at 7:00 in the morning, felt a very specific kind of stillness move through him. The kind that came right before something hard.
Clare, Vivien said pleasantly, as if she were remarking on the weather. You never mentioned you were bringing someone. Clare opened her mouth. Marcus spoke first. It came together last minute.
He said easy, unhurried, holding the older woman's gaze without apology. I hope that's not a problem. Viven looked at him with eyes that were measuring precise and utterly unreadable. Not at all, she said. And somehow that was the most frightening thing she could have said.
She pulled out the empty chair and sat down, without asking, without being invited. She simply sat the way a woman sits when she has decided that a space belongs to her. I'm Vivian Bennett, she said, extending her hand to Marcus. Clare's grandmother. Marcus shook it.
Marcus read. Marcus. She repeated it, filed it. And how do you know my granddaughter? Marcus glanced at Clare.
Clare's eyes were doing the thing again, the begging thing, the please thing. But something had shifted in Marcus between the moment she first grabbed his arm and now something had settled in him. Because he'd sat across from this young woman for an hour and listened to her and seen who she was, and he was not going to lie for her. He wasn't built for that, but he wasn't going to hurt her either. We've been talking for a while, he said.
Vivien's eyes moved between them. I see, she said. Your granddaughter, Marcus said, keeping his voice even, is a very thoughtful person. We've had a good conversation tonight. Vivien smiled.
It was the smile of someone who was excellent at smiling and meant absolutely nothing by it. She is thoughtful, she agreed. Sometimes too thoughtful. She has a habit of overthinking what should be simple decisions. Clare's jaw tightened.
Marcus sat down his coffee mug. I'm not sure decisions about someone's life are ever really simple, he said. A pause. Vivien looked at him with new interest. And what do you do, Marcus?