Twenty-three years. I had twenty-three years of data on Patrick Callahan, locked in the cabinet I never wanted to open, and every piece of it was pointing at this moment — this precise configuration of his cowardice and my persistent, inconvenient love for him. He was asked not to tell you. I turned that over once and put it down. It explained the silence. It didn't excuse it. But it was a fact, and I collected facts.
"If I agree," I said slowly, "he's clear."
"The debt is settled."
"And what does this actually mean?" I gestured at the space between us, at the whole impossible shape of what he was proposing. "In practice."
"You come to New Orleans. You live in my home. You're introduced, publicly, as my fiancée." He held my gaze without apology. "For a period to be determined."
"And if I want to leave."
"You're not a prisoner."
"That's not an answer."
Something almost like respect crossed his face. Almost. "If you want to leave, we discuss terms. You're not a prisoner," he said again, slower this time, as if precision mattered to him. "But there are expectations. Appearances to maintain. People watching who would draw conclusions from your absence."
"People who would hurt him." I meant my father.
"People who would ask questions. I find it's better not to give them reasons."
The music from down the hall had stopped. The car that had passed was long gone. The yogurt in the hallway was definitely going to be a problem.
I turned to look at my father one more time.
He finally raised his eyes to mine. And in them I found what I always found, the love that was real and the failure that wasrealer, layered over each other until you couldn't separate them anymore, until they were just the texture of him, the material he was made from.
"You should have told me," I said.
"I know." His voice was barely a sound. "I'm sorry, baby."
I had heard those words so many times they had worn smooth. They didn't catch on anything anymore.
I turned back to the man in the armchair.
"What's your name."
"Dominic Moreau."
I nodded. Stored. "I have conditions."
He waited. No protest, no surprise, just that stillness, like a man accustomed to negotiations that started exactly this way.
"I finish my degree," I said. "I don't disappear. I don't become decorative." I held his gaze. "And you don't lie to me. Not about anything that matters. I'm not asking for everything. I'm asking that what you do tell me is true."
A pause. Something shifted in him, not visible exactly, but perceptible, the way a change in air pressure is perceptible before a storm.
"Agreed," he said.
He stood then, for the first time, and I understood the armchair, the stillness, the entire economy of his presence: he didn't need height or movement to own a room. He had already owned this one from the moment he sat down. Standing was almost incidental.
He was taller than I'd registered. He straightened his jacket.
"Someone will be in contact tomorrow with details." He looked at my father briefly, not warmly, but without malice either. Indifferent, the way you were indifferent to things you'd already accounted for. "Callahan."
My father nodded without lifting his head.
Dominic Moreau walked to the door, paused with his hand on the frame, and turned back once.