“My sister kept telling me I was allowed to have a life.”
“I knew that intellectually.”
“But?”
“Knowing and wanting aren’t the same.”
Claire understood more than she expected.
“What changed?”
“My son.”
“Noah?”
Daniel looked surprised.
“You know his name?”
“Paige mentioned it.”
He nodded.
“He told me six months ago that I had become boring.”
Claire laughed.
“Brutal.”
“He said all I did was work, cook, and watch baseball with him.”
“That sounds peaceful.”
“It was.”
“Then why date?”
Daniel looked toward her.
“Because he asked whether I was lonely after he went to bed.”
Claire’s smile faded.
“That’s a dangerous ten-year-old.”
“Twelve now.”
“Worse.”
“He was right.”
Claire looked down.
“What about you?”
“What?”
“Why did you agree tonight?”
She hesitated.
Then chose honesty.
“Because my father died.”
Daniel frowned slightly.
“That was three years ago.”
“I know.”
She looked toward the mountains.
“My life was very organized before he got sick.”
“Company.”
“Travel.”
Friends.
Relationships that never became serious because work always provided a respectable reason to leave early.”
“When Dad got sick, everything stopped.”
“I spent six months with him.”
“After he died, I went back to the company and became worse.”
“More hours.”
“More travel.”
“More reasons not to need anybody.”
Daniel listened without interrupting.
Claire continued.
“Paige finally told me I treat intimacy like a hostile acquisition.”
Daniel laughed.
“She sounds subtle.”
“She isn’t.”
“So tonight was…”
“Proof I could sit through one dinner with a stranger without performing due diligence.”
Daniel glanced at the letter.
“How’s that going?”
“Terribly.”
They both laughed.
A car passed slowly.
The driver waved.
Daniel waved back.
Claire looked at her Cadillac.
“So what do we do?”
“Mechanically?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
Daniel considered.
“We were already going to dinner.”
“That was before discovering our dead fathers apparently formed some kind of romantic contingency plan.”
“Technically they explicitly said we owe them nothing.”
“Technically my father tampered with my Cadillac.”
Daniel smiled.
“That is going to bother me professionally for years.”
Claire folded the letter carefully.
“We should go.”
“To dinner?”
“Yes.”
“You still want to?”
She looked at him.
“You stopped for a stranger.”
“Apparently your father expected that.”
“No.”
Claire shook her head.
“He hoped.”
There was a difference.
Daniel closed the hood firmly.
“Stay behind me this time.”
“You said you’d follow me.”
“Changed my mind.”
“Why?”
“If that connector fails again, I want your headlights behind me.”
Claire smiled.
“Fine.”
They drove toward Pine Hollow Lodge.