"How did you find this address?" she asked. Nolan set his glass down on the nearest surface. He understood exactly what she was thinking. An applicant who had interviewed with the CEO that morning, now standing in the CEO's family Christmas party that same evening, the interpretation wrote itself, and it was not a good one. He could leave.
He knew that was the clean move. Walk out, send an email in the morning explaining the coincidence, remove himself from the situation entirely. But leaving meant accepting the implication. It meant behaving like someone who had something to hide, which was the one thing he was sure he didn't. "I live four houses from here," he said.
"I didn't know Judith was your aunt. I didn't know whose party this was until I walked through the door. He held her gaze. "She invited me this afternoon before either of us knew the connection. Camille was quiet for a moment.
"You could have left when you saw me," she said. I could have, he agreed. But I'm not going to let a coincidence turn into a confession. She looked at him for a long moment. Something shifted in her expression, not softened exactly, but recalibrated.
She didn't tell him to leave. She didn't tell him to stay either. She picked up her tray of mushrooms and walked back toward the kitchen. And Nolan stood in the entry of his neighbor's living room, alone with a glass of sparkling cider and the distinct feeling that the most complicated day of his recent professional life had just become more complicated. He stayed, not to impress her, not to argue his case.
He stayed because Judith had invited him in good faith, and he was not going to let someone else's suspicion decide what that meant. He hung up his coat, picked up his glass, and walked into the living room. The living room of 1847 Juniper Crest Lane had the particular warmth of a house that had been decorated by someone who cared more about comfort than coordination. There were too many candles and not enough matching ornaments on the tree, and a wreath above the fireplace that was slightly off center, and had clearly been that way for years. Nolan liked it immediately.
Graham Rhodes introduced himself from across the room with the easy confidence of someone who assumed he'd get along with most people and was usually right. He was 41, broad-shouldered, with the kind of face that looked like it smiled often. His wife, Paige, was beside him, red-haired and sharp-eyed, holding a glass of wine and watching Nolan with the frank curiosity of someone who had heard nothing about him, and was perfectly comfortable forming her own opinion from scratch. Their daughter Laya was 9 years old and had already decided without consulting anyone that Nolan was interesting. "Are you a friend of Aunt Judith's?" she asked.
"More of a neighbor," he said. "She doesn't usually invite neighbors to Christmas. "Laya," Paige said. "It's true," Laya said without apology. Nolan crouched down to her level.
"She told me I wasn't invited so much as informed. Laya considered this. "That sounds right," she decided and went back to the puzzle she'd been working on near the fireplace. Camille moved through the evening like someone running two processes simultaneously, present in every conversation, functional in every exchange, but also watching watching him specifically with a consistency that she managed to make look casual and wasn't. Nolan helped Graham diagnose the electric carving knife that had stopped working mid- test run, which turned out to be a loose wire at the handle joint, fixable in under four minutes with a butter knife and the tip of a ballpoint pen.
Graham was unreasonably delighted by this. Paige disputed Nolan's method for making pan gravy with the conviction of someone who had been cooking for 20 years and had strong feelings about roux ratios. And Nolan held his ground because he was right and also because the argument was genuinely enjoyable. Laya drafted him into a Christmas trivia game that he lost badly because he was apparently the only adult in the room who didn't know that the red-nosed reindeer's name had appeared in a Montgomery Ward catalog in 1939. At some point, without deciding to, he stopped thinking about the interview.
He was just Nolan helping with a knife, losing at trivia, arguing about gravy. He caught Camille watching him again when he didn't notice right away. When he looked up and met her eyes, she looked away first, but not before he saw it. The slight adjustment in her expression, the recalibration of something she'd been certain about. The woman in the conference room had been entirely sure she'd understood what kind of person he was.
The woman at this dinner table was no longer certain. Judith's dining table was long and set with deliberate care. Cloth napkins, the good china, candles in glass holders that threw warm light across the faces of everyone sitting down. Seven place settings in total, which was one more than the number of people sitting down. Nolan noticed it after he'd taken his seat.
The chair at the far end of the table had been pulled slightly out, as if recently vacated. In front of it, a plate, a folded napkin, a glass of water, untouched, set with the same intention as every other place at the table. He didn't think anything of it until Laya climbed onto her chair and reached toward the empty seat to drag it closer to her own, and Camille said sharply and immediately, "Don't. The table went quiet. It wasn't loud.
It wasn't angry. It was the kind of word that comes from a place that has nothing to do with the present moment, and everyone at the table knew exactly where it came from, except for Nolan. Laya pulled her hand back without complaint. Graham refilled his glass. Paige touched her daughter's shoulder briefly.
Judith looked at Nolan from across the table with an expression that was calm and explanatory and kind. That was Henry's chair, she said. Camille's father. He passed 4 years ago. We keep his place set at Christmas.
I'm sorry, Nolan said. Thank you, Judith said simply. The dinner resumed. Conversations restarted around him and Nolan returned to them. But he carried the image of that chair with him through the rest of the meal.