Chapter 18: The Workshop

I asked her on the hallway window seat, with two hundred people still leaving the ballroom behind us.

"Have dinner with me," I said. "Tomorrow night. Not a courthouse, not a hospital. A date."

"Where?"

"The garage."

She laughed, and she said yes before I finished the word.

Saturday at six I had the workbench cleared and the shavings swept.

I had laid a plank across two sawhorses and set it with two plates, a candle in a jar and a paper bag from the taco truck.

It was the same truck.

Margot came in through the side door in jeans and a soft grey sweater, with her hair loose.

She stopped and looked at the plank and the jar.

"You remembered the truck," she said.

"I remember everything."

"I know." She took the bag from my hand and set it down. "I'm sorry I didn't know it."

"Eat first."

We ate standing at the bench, and I got salsa on my shirt.

She looked at it for a long moment.

"You look like a man who lost a knife fight," she said.

"You said that on the first date."

"I thought it again just now." She smiled. "I think I loved you in about four minutes. I've been catching up for six years."

She wiped her fingers and took an envelope out of her bag.

"This is for Millie," she said. "Not you. I need you to give it to her."

I opened it.

It was a deed, with the address of the building and the number of the garage unit.

The new owner's name was Millicent Treharne.

"I bought it from the landlord on Thursday," Margot said. "It's your workshop, but it's in her name, so I can't ever take it back. That's the point."

"You didn't have to."

"I know. That's why it counts."

I put the envelope on the bench.

My hands were not quite steady, and she saw.

"Show me the drawer," she said.

I showed her the half-finished drawer, the pale pine, the dovetails I had cut by hand the week before.

She ran her thumb over the joint.

"You made this?"

"I make things."

"I never asked what you made."

"You're asking now."

"I'm asking," Margot said, and put her palm flat against my chest.

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