"The whole time. Twenty yards away." He looked at her. "I saw Dorian bring her out. I watched him put her in her car. I sat there with my headlights off and watched a younger man do the job I'd been too scared to do."
Avery didn't know what to say. She sat down on the step.
"You're wondering why I'm telling you," Harlan said. "Viv knows. I told her in April. I'm telling you because I watched you go into that pool, and I know that look. I know what running looks like. I ran in a necktie in a parking lot and you ran in a blue dress into my deep end, and it's the same thing, sweetheart. It's the same exact thing." He leaned forward. "Here's all I've got. Running feels like it'll take five minutes. It takes four months. It takes casseroles and borrowed folding chairs and buying three dozen white roses because your neighbor's future daughter-in-law said she liked them. It takes a long, long time to walk back from a parking lot. Don't sit out there as long as I did."
Avery looked through the side gate at the pool, still and blue, a few leaves turning slow circles on the surface.
"Is she forgiving you?" she asked.
Harlan smiled for the first time, a little crooked under the mustache.
"She let me drive her to the farmer's market last Saturday. She made me carry the tomatoes. Didn't say a word to me for the first twenty minutes." He picked his crossword back up. "I'm counting it."
* * *
She texted Dorian that night. It took her an hour and eleven drafts.
*Lucca's. Thursday. 7. You left halfway through. I left halfway through. Let's find out how it ends.*
He replied in under a minute, which told her he'd been looking at his phone, which told her something about how he spent his evenings.
*I'll be there. I won't bring anyone.*
Then, a moment later: *I'll check. Twice.*
She laughed out loud in her empty kitchen among Paige's boxes, and it surprised her.
Lucca's had not changed. Avery suspected Lucca's had not changed in forty years. Same candles in red glass. Same accordion. Same ficus, slightly larger, guarding the same two-top by the window — empty tonight.
Dorian was already there. He stood when she came in. He was wearing a dark green shirt, and he'd gotten a haircut, and he looked nervous in a way he hadn't let himself look at the party.
"Hi," he said.
"You said that in a tone again."
"I'm going to keep saying it in a tone. I don't have another one."