Chapter 15: Dinner Date

I told the woman from Lakeview Dialysis that I was not Adelaide Ashgrove's daughter, and that she should take my number off the form.

Then I gave her the name of Adelaide's lawyer and hung up.

Keir watched me do it from the bed.

"She will be angry that the clinic can't reach you," he said.

"Good. An angry woman with failing kidneys makes mistakes."

That was the last I heard from the clinic, and the last I let myself think about it.

Twelve days after the surgery, Keir asked me to dinner.

"We eat dinner every night," I said.

"At the same table, with my uncle clearing his throat. I mean dinner."

He had the conservatory on the south side of the compound opened for the first time since his father died.

There was one small table among the dead palms, with a white cloth and two candles and the lake black beyond the glass.

He wore a dark suit.

His left foot lay flat on the footplate, and he had put it there himself.

"You're showing off," I said.

"I'm taking the credit. You have your notes."

I sat across from him in the blue dress Peg had pressed for me, which was a little short and fit me everywhere else.

The cook had made steak and a salad and a chocolate thing I did not ask about.

We ate.

He told me about the first deal he closed at nineteen, with his father in the room not speaking.

I told him what a cord looked like under the lights, and he did not flinch.

When the plates went away, he looked at the candle for a moment.

"I don't know how to do this part," he said.

"What part?"

"Sitting across from you and not having a reason to be here."

"You have a reason. You're my patient."

"Is that what I am?"

I put my napkin on the table and stood.

I walked around to his side and sat on the edge of the table in front of him, so that my knee touched his.

"Do you want me to say no?"

"I want you to say what you want."

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