It was the right pace. Leona did not send him clients. She did not mention his name to contacts. She did not intervene in any part of his business. That was how she rebuilt the thing she had broken.
In April, she attended a benefit dinner at a hotel in Belltown, the kind of event she had attended hundreds of times, full of the same kinds of men doing the same kinds of things for the same kinds of reasons. A developer from Phoenix spent 20 minutes explaining his portfolio. A private equity partner from New York told her with a straight face that he had always admired her instincts. A man she had met twice before presented her with his card as though it were a gift. Someone at her elbow said, "Is there no one here good enough for you?" She looked down at her phone.
A message from Nolan timestamped 9 minutes ago. Finished up. I'm at the old place on Second. If you haven't eaten, she set her champagne glass on a passing tray. She said good night to no one in particular and walked out.
The sandwich place on Second Avenue was mostly empty at that hour. Nolan was in the same window booth he had been in the first time she'd walked through the door. Same posture, same coffee cup, same quality of stillness that she had spent months trying to understand and had eventually stopped trying to categorize. Sadi was beside him, legs swinging, working through what appeared to be a geometry problem set. She looked up when Leona came in and slid 4 in toward the wall without being asked, a small gesture that cost nothing and meant everything.
Leona sat across from Nolan. She had been waiting to ask this question for a long time and she was tired of waiting. That first night, she said at Harbor Crest, were you actually ignoring me? He looked at her. Then he smiled the full one.
The one that changed his face. I saw you the moment you walked into that ballroom, he said. She looked at him. Then why? Because every man in that room wanted something from you, he said.
The ones with wine glasses and business cards. The guy who kept angling for the photo. All of them. And you knew it. I could see you knew it.