I remember the group.”
Brittany smiled with visible relief.
“Of course.
We didn’t realize you were arriving tonight.”
“My meetings begin tomorrow.”
Her eyes moved to the roses in Grace’s arms.
“Right.
We just assumed—”
Grace finally looked directly at her.
Brittany stopped.
For fourteen months Grace had responded to humiliation with silence because she believed silence was dignity.
Sometimes it was.
Sometimes silence merely gave cruel people more room.
Matteo closed the folder.
“Grace, are you ready?”
She nodded.
Brittany gave a thin laugh.
“You two know each other well, then?”
Matteo looked at Grace before answering, as though her comfort mattered more than Brittany’s curiosity.
Grace surprised herself.
“Fourteen months,” she said.
Jessica’s mouth opened.
Brittany’s face changed.
Not dramatically.
Grace would remember that later.
There was no theatrical collapse, no shouted confession, no movie-scene defeat.
Just calculation.
Brittany was rebuilding the world in her head because a person she had placed at the bottom of it had suddenly refused to remain there.
Matteo picked up his folder.
“I made a dinner reservation,” he told Grace.
“But if you’re tired, we can go somewhere quiet.”
Grace looked down at her uniform.
For a second, the old instinct returned.
She thought about changing clothes.
Fixing her hair.
Becoming presentable enough to stand beside a man who had arrived in a black car wearing a suit that probably cost more than her monthly rent.
Matteo saw the hesitation.
“What?”
“I’m dressed for work.”
He glanced at her navy shirt, then back at her face.
“You just finished work.”
That was all.
No embarrassment.
No rescue fantasy.
No pretending her life was something else.
Grace adjusted the flowers in her arms.
“Then I’m hungry.”
They walked out together.
Behind them, nobody laughed.
Dinner was not at the kind of place Grace expected.
Matteo had reserved a quiet Italian restaurant in Decatur after remembering that Grace did not like crowded rooms when she was tired.
When Grace told him Linda would probably be waiting up, Matteo asked whether her mother would be offended if they brought dessert home.
“She’ll be offended if we don’t.”
“Then this is serious.”
Grace smiled.
The strangeness of finally sitting across from him was almost overwhelming.
