Chapter Thirty-Five
Garrett
Sunday dinner was lamb.
It was the one thing he cooked well, a slow-braised shoulder with rosemary and garlic and a wine he had chosen specifically, and it had been in the oven since two in the afternoon when she arrived at six with a bottle of something she said was better than whatever he had chosen.
He looked at her bottle. She was right. He opened hers.
The flat smelled of the lamb and the rosemary and the particular warmth of an oven that had been going for four hours.
She sat at the kitchen counter and watched him finish the sauce, which she did with the same quality of attention she brought to everything, her chin in her hand, her glass near her elbow.
"Your father called mine," she said.
He looked at her. "When."
"This week. Apparently your father looked up some of his electrical work online and called to ask about the wiring in a building he's designing. A community centre in Evanston."
"My father is designing a community centre in Evanston."
"He is. And he needed to know about the particular electrical requirements for a performance space with variable acoustic configurations." She picked up her glass. "Your father and my father spoke for an hour and twenty minutes."
He stirred the sauce. He was aware of something happening in his chest that was not quite amusement and not quite something larger, the two things very close together. "I didn't arrange that," he said.
"I know you didn't." She was watching him. "My father came up last Saturday. He met your father by accident, through you, before he'd met you." She paused. "He approves of you. He hasn't met you and he approves of you. I thought you should know."
He set the spoon down. He turned to look at her properly. She was sitting at his kitchen counter with the wine and the smell of the lamb and an expression that was the unguarded one, the version he had been collecting since the first morning.
"Cait."
"I know," she said. "I know what it means. I'm not asking you to solve it tonight."
"I'm not trying to solve it. I'm trying to tell you something."
She set her glass down. She waited with the stillness she had that was different from his stillness, warmer, more consciously chosen.
"I called Victor on Thursday," he said. "I asked about the possibility of an extended engagement in Chicago. Not as a liaison. A different structure. A Midwest portfolio role, based here, with New York involvement on a quarterly basis."
She looked at him. Her face did the thing where something moved through it and then she held it, not to conceal it but to make sure she had understood before she responded. "And Victor."
"Said he'd think about it. Which means he's already thought about it and he's deciding how much he wants to tell me about his thinking before he gives me the answer."
"Do you know the answer."
"I think so. Victor is rational. A Midwest portfolio role has been on the firm's expansion list for two years.
The argument for locating it in Chicago is stronger now than it was because of Meridian, which demonstrated that there are deals here that our standard New York-based approach was missing.
" He looked at her. "The argument makes sense without me.
It makes more sense with me, because I know this market now in a way that took four months to build. "
She was quiet for a moment. The oven hummed. Below them, distantly, the city made its Sunday evening sounds.
"You're not doing this for me," she said. It was not a question but it was also not quite a statement.
"I'm doing it because it's the right professional move and because I want to be here." He held her eyes. "Both things are true. I'm not going to pretend the second one isn't."
She looked at him. Then she slid off the kitchen counter and came around to where he was standing and put her hands at his face the way he had put his hands at her face in the parking lot in November, cupping it, looking at him directly.
"I want you to be here," she said.
He kissed her. She kissed him back with her hands at his face and his arms around her and the sauce beginning very gently to catch at the bottom of the pan, which they did not notice for a further two minutes and which required, ultimately, a small amount of remediation that she managed with the wooden spoon while he dealt with the flame, both of them laughing in the kitchen in a way that was unremarkable and which he intended to remember for a long time.