I don't meet people who mean things. Evelyn said it came out more simply than she intended. More honestly. Not often. Her father looked at her for a long time.
"No," he said finally. "You don't." The restaurant had begun slowly to resume some version of itself. Not entirely. The evening carried a residue that would not fully dissipate, but tables had returned to conversation.
Staff had begun to move with something approaching normal purpose, and the ambient sound of silverware and low voices had crept back into the room like water finding its level. Evelyn turned her wheelchair until she was facing Lucas more directly. He was looking at her. Not expectantly, not nervously, with the same quiet level attention he had brought to everything else tonight. "Why did you do it?"
She asked. Lucas looked at her for a moment. "Which part? Any of it. All of it.
You didn't know me. You were leaving. You could have kept walking. I know, he said. So why didn't you?
He thought about the answer honestly before giving it. Because no one deserves to be treated like they're in the way, he said. And she was being treated like she was in the way. In her own reservation, he paused. That bothered me.
It bothered you, Evelyn repeated. There was something in the way she said it. Not disbelieving, but careful, as if she was handling a concept she did not entirely trust. "Yeah, you didn't think about what might happen to you." Lucas glanced at Luna, still sleeping against his side, her breath slow and steady, oblivious to the evening she had partly altered.
"I thought about what she'd see," he said. "If I kept walking, she notices everything." He paused. She'd have remembered. Evelyn was quiet for a moment.
She looked at the child. Then she looked back at Lucas and for the first time all evening, the composure she wore like a second coat showed a genuine seam. Her expression did not break, but it opened slightly the way a face does when something it has held at distance has come close enough to feel. She asked if they didn't like people like you. Evelyn said, "Yeah, she was asking about herself, wasn't she?