The other half is making sure the who trusted you with their house never has a reason to regret it. James nodded. Set his wine glass down. That's the whole thing. He said.
In any business, in anything really. He glanced at Clare for just a second, barely a second, and then back to his wine glass, making sure people don't regret trusting you. The table was quiet in the particular way that happens. When something has been said, that means more than it appears to mean, and everyone present has understood it, and no one is going to name it directly. Andre understood it.
He didn't know yet what to do with the understanding. Lucille, who had the unairring instinct of a woman who had lived long enough to know when a moment needed puncturing, said James. You're interrogating the boy. I'm having a conversation. You're having an interrogation with wine.
She turned to Andre with the regal composure of someone who had been the most important person in every room she'd entered for the last 40 years. Don't let him frighten you. He asked Ryan the same questions for 2 years running and eventually just took him golfing instead of admitting he liked him. She paused. You're not a golfer, are you?
I can learn, Andre said. Lucille looked at him steadily. Don't, she said. Golf is a refuge for men who can't sit still with their own thoughts. James uses it as a personality.
She picked up her coffee. You seem like a man who can sit still when I need to. Good. She sipped her coffee. That's rarer than it should be.
Across the table, Ryan smiled into his own coffee with the smile of a man who had just been told something he'd heard before. And from the same source. It was 9:47 when the dinner officially ended, and the family began the slow process of gathering coats and saying goodbyes and making the rounds of hugs and cheek kisses that Clare's family conducted. With the organized warmth of a military operation. Patricia held Andrere's hands in both of hers for a long moment.
You come to Sunday dinner, she said. It was not a question. I'd like that, he said. And the terrible thing, the thing he registered only after the words were already out was that he meant it. Not as performance, as actual genuine desire.
He wanted to sit at Patricia Morgan's table and eat her food and listen to Lucille say things that made everyone simultaneously cringe and laugh. And he wanted to watch Clare in the context of her family in the place where she'd come from and understand her better than he already did. He filed that away with the other things he was filing away tonight. The pile was getting tall. James shook his hand at the door.