Page 10 of If She Sensed

“Maybe.But believe it or not, I can handle the deep and perplexing routine of pre-school drop-off.”

“I know, but…”

He covered her hand with his and gave it a squeeze.“But nothing.It’s fine, Kate.”

"I know.I’m just worried, I guess.Worried that even with this next-to-nothing schedule I might not be around enough.Whether he'd even notice the difference between a full-time mother and whatever I am now."

"He knows.Kids always know."

She thought about a picture Michael had drawn a few weeks ago, that was now stuck on the refrigerator.It had been done with crayon on printer paper.In the picture, the three of them were standing outside what was clearly, based on the yellow square of a window and the lopsided tree, meant to be their house.She was identifiable only by the dark scribble of her hair and the fact that Allen had apparently told him to add a little rectangle in her hand that was meant to be her phone.The trio of figures were smiling with wide crayon grins.Michael had put her in the picture exactly as she was, and he had given her a smile, although she felt the presence of the damned phone meant something she wasn’t ready to admit just yet.

She heard the cartoon in the other room reach some kind of climax — a swell of music, a dog doing something unlikely — and then Michael's delighted laugh.

Allen looked toward the sound and then back at her."Go in there," he said."You've got twenty minutes before bed."

She found Michael on the rug with his legs crossed, tilting toward the television at an angle that could not have been comfortable.He registered her arrival without turning his head, the way he did when he didn't want to break his concentration, but also wanted her to know that he wanted her to sit down.She sat on the couch behind him.After about thirty seconds he got up and climbed up beside her, positioning himself against her side and nestling into her.

He pointed at the screen and said, "That one has a red collar."

"I see that," Kate said.

"Red is a good color."

"I agree."

He leaned into her a little more, and she put her arm around him, and they watched the rest of the cartoon together without saying another word.She breathed it in, wondering how she had ever gotten so lucky.

She was in bed by ten.Allen was reading beside her and she lay with her eyes closed and let herself drift toward sleep.And, with no real surprise, elements of the case arrived in the last few minutes before sleep.Not the whole scene, just the specific details that had lodged themselves somewhere during the day and not let go.The broken wine glass, three pieces and a pale stain on the rug.The lamp burning on the end table.The folded blanket on the arm of the couch, still neat.All of that blood.

She saw Carol Paige in her navy dress, one arm extended, having come home from the best evening she'd had in years, unlocked the back door for a friend and having a glass of wine.

Kate lay still and let the image run through without pushing it away.She had learned a long time ago that pushing it away didn't work.You looked at it, you acknowledged what it was, and then you let it settle into the part of you that held these things and kept working.

She would go back in the morning.She would sit down with whatever Sloane had pulled on the financials and the restaurant footage and whatever else had come in overnight, and she would start again from a different angle.

Allen turned a page beside her and with the shape of tomorrow secure in her head, Kate finally fell softly into sleep.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The restaurant was the kind of place that felt cozy and warm, and it was a direct result of the lighting.It was not the almost mournful dimness of a trendy place trying too hard, but a warm, considered glow that came from actual candles on the tables and pendant lights above the bar.The walls were exposed brick and the menu was written on a chalkboard behind the host stand, which Donna had noticed on the way in and had taken as a good sign.She had a theory about chalkboard menus: places that used them and took their time with the lettering tended to take their time with everything else, too.

She had been right.The food was exceptional.She had ordered the pan-seared halibut, which had arrived on a shallow pool of saffron broth with charred leeks arranged alongside it.She had been working through it slowly for the past twenty minutes because she genuinely did not want it to end.Mainly because of the man sitting across from her.

Vincent had ordered the short rib, and at some point early in the entree he had slid the plate a few inches across the table without comment so she could try a bite.She had.It was extraordinary, and she had told him so.

"I've been coming here for about two years," Vincent said."I wasn't sure it was the right choice for tonight, actually.I thought it might be too quiet."

"It'sexactlyright," Donna said.

He smiled at her and a little flush of warmth passed all the way through her.Vincent Godfrey was in his early sixties, with a calm, relaxed way of carrying himself that she had picked up on within the first five minutes.He had dark eyes and a close-trimmed beard going gray at the edges.Perhaps most importantly, he had been easy to talk to in a way she hadn't fully anticipated.

They had been messaging for three weeks, all online.Online conversations had a particular ceiling, she had learned, and the person on the other side of one did not always match the person who showed up in person.She’d hadfartoo many experiences to prove that correct.Tonight, he had exceeded the version of himself she had put together and imagined from those online exchanges.He was warmer in person, and funnier, and he listened with a focused attention that she had stopped expecting from people a long time ago.

They had talked through most of dinner without effort: his work as an architect, her position managing the office of a mid-sized law firm; his two adult daughters, her son in his second year of college; his love for Broadway tunes, her preference for classic rock.At some point the conversation had shifted to travel and they had spent a pleasant fifteen minutes comparing opinions on cities they had both visited.Rome versus Florence.He had said Florence without hesitation.She had argued Rome.It had been the most enjoyable disagreement she could remember having in years.

Donna had been divorced for fourteen months.The marriage had lasted nine years and at least the last four of those had been suffocating.That’s the exact word she’d used to describe it to Vincent.Not dramatic or explosive, just steadily, quietly airless… like a room with the windows painted shut.When it finally ended she had felt mostly relief, and then guilt about the relief, and then a long flat stretch of nothing much that had lasted the better part of a year.

But lately something had shifted.She had started noticing things again.Just small things really.Like the way the light looked in the late afternoon, the pleasure of a good meal when you’ve gotten almost butnot quitefull.And because of that, and this unexpectedly amazing date with Vincent, she felt, in the most careful way she would allow herself to use the word,hopeful.