"That's good," I said.
"There's a girl on my floor," she said, not looking at me, folding a T-shirt that she was about to throw away anyway, "whose dad owns, like, half of the car dealerships in Columbus. And she asked me where my North Face was from, and I said Goodwill, because it was, and she said, 'Oh my God, that's so brave.'" Margot put the folded shirt in the bag. "Brave. Like I'd told her I had a disease."
I didn't know what to say. I said, "That was a dumb thing for her to say."
"It wasn't dumb. She meant it nicely. That's the worst part." She tied the bag shut. "It's fine. I just don't want to be the brave girl."
I carried the bag out to the truck for her. I dropped it off at St. Vincent de Paul on Lorain the next morning, and while I was there I bought a flannel shirt for three dollars, and I've been wearing it ever since.
Walking into that dining room on her arm, eleven years later, I understood that tonight, without meaning to, I was making her the brave girl again.
III
The Lindqvists were at a round table by the far windows, under one of the old iron ice hooks that the designers had left hanging from the ceiling beams as decoration. Peter stood up when he saw us and came around the table and shook my hand with both of his, and said, "Wes. Great jacket," and I could have hugged him.
His father stood too. Graham Lindqvist was a tall man in a gray suit that fit him the way water fits a glass, and he had a long friendly face and reading glasses pushed up on his head, and he shook my hand and said, "So glad, so glad," and sat back down and immediately returned to the wine list as if it were a document he needed to sign.
Philippa did not stand. She extended her hand across the table, and I took it, and it was small and cool and had a ring on it with a stone the size of a pencil eraser. She was perhaps sixty, with silver hair cut very precisely at the jaw, and she wore a cream-colored blouse with a high neck and a single strand of pearls, and she looked at me with an expression of total and courteous attention, the way a doctor looks at an X-ray.
"Wesley," she said. "Finally. Margot has told us so much about you."
I doubted that very much, but I said, "All good, I hope."
"Oh, all of it." She smiled. "Please, sit."
I sat. Margot sat beside me. The waiter, a young man with a ponytail and very clean fingernails, poured me water from a bottle that I suspect cost what I'd charged Mrs. Tran for her fan motor, and handed me a menu printed on heavy paper with ragged edges.
"Margot tells us you're in refrigeration," Philippa said.