He’s home. He’s good.” She paused. “Thank you for the trust.” He nodded once. “He would have been fine regardless.”
“Maybe.” “But fine with surgery is better than fine without it.” She looked at him.
“You said you wanted to discuss a different role.” “I did.” He was quiet for a moment, the way he was quiet when he was deciding how directly to say something.
“The estate needs a house manager.” “Phyllis is planning to retire at the end of the year.”
“She told me last week, though I think she’s been planning it for longer than that.”
He kept his eyes on her face. “The role would involve managing the full household operations.”
“Staff coordination, vendor relations, schedule management. It would require a different kind of attention than what you’ve been doing.”
“And you think I can do it?” “I think,” he said carefully, “that you have been doing it in addition to everything else for the past month.”
“Phyllis thinks so, too.” “She asked me if I was going to offer it to you before or after you figured out you were already doing it.”
Imani laughed, a real one, surprised out of her, brief and genuine. It was a sound she hadn’t made in this house before.
Something changed in his expression when he heard it. Nothing dramatic. Something small and real and unhurried, like a door that has been slightly ajar moving 1° further open.
“I’ll think about it.” She said. “That’s all I’m asking.” She looked at him, at the window light behind him, and the city beyond it, and the specific quality of his attention, which was the same quality she’d noticed the first time and had been noticing ever since.
The quality of someone who was genuinely paying attention to the person in front of them, rather than to the version of that person they’d decided on in advance.
“I saw you.” She said. “That day in the garden, before I made the walk.”
She wasn’t sure why she was saying this now. She said it anyway. “You had this look on your face, like you were somewhere else entirely, even though you were smiling.”
He was quiet. “I keep wondering what you were thinking about.” She said. He looked at her for a long moment.
Then he looked out the window at the city, the same city, the same skyline, the same blue July sky.
