Five Thursdays passed.
On the sixth, rain returned to Federal Hill.
At seven twenty, the side door opened.
Ronan Vale stepped inside.
The room reacted exactly as it always did.
Voices lowered.
A man near the bar looked away.
Marco appeared almost immediately.
But Ronan did not go to his usual booth.
He stopped beside the service station where Elena was arranging silverware.
She looked up.
Neither spoke for several seconds.
“You changed your table?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then you’re blocking my forks.”
His mouth moved.
Not quite a smile.
Close.
“I was told curiosity is dangerous,” he said.
Elena folded her arms.
“I believe I was the one told that.”
“I’ve been thinking about your answer.”
“What answer?”
“That you knew who I was and stayed anyway.”
Elena glanced around the restaurant.
Half the room was pretending not to listen.
“I stayed because I work here.”
Ronan raised an eyebrow.
“And because,” she added, “I liked talking to you.”
The simplicity of it seemed to unsettle him more than fear ever could.
“No favor?” he asked.
“No.”
“No money?”
“No.”
“No protection?”
“Absolutely not.”
Ronan looked almost offended by the last answer.
Elena smiled.
“I wanted dinner with the man who listened to me talk about squid ink pasta like it was a matter of national importance.”
Something in Ronan’s face gave way.
Not dramatically.
He did not become a different man.
He simply looked tired instead of dead.
“Sit with me after closing,” he said.
“That sounded suspiciously like an order.”
“Would you sit with me after closing?”
“Better.”
That night they returned to the corner table.
Marco left two coffees and disappeared into the kitchen.
For the first time, Ronan talked.
Not about docks.
Not about politicians.
Not about enemies.
He talked about his son.
He described a boy who laughed loudly in a house built for quiet men.
A boy who ate too quickly, argued about everything, and had once tried to convince his father that arriving late to school was evidence of independent thinking.
