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“Yes, desperately.”

“He hasn’t missed a single opening night in forty years. She still gets flowers, which means he still brings them. Whatever started all those years ago has survived everything that came after.”

I watched the hat disappear through the theatre doors and smiled. “That one, I believe.”

“Of course you do. It has evidence.”

“It has plausibility.”

“Which is apparently the most romance I can get you to admit to.”

“I’m a scientist. I follow the data.”

“Yes, and look at you now. Voluntarily spending a Saturday morning in the gardens, eating brunch, and about to watch an opera.”

She was right. Ordinarily, I would be at my laptop, checking my phone for emails, or in the lab in case something needed my attention.

“All true, Charlotte. What is Blackwood doing to me?” I said, laughing.

We finished our breakfast and stepped out into the afternoon, walking toward the theatre as the city shone beneath the sun.

* * *

Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore was playing in a small theatre on West Forty-Fourth. I had passed it countless times but gone inside only twice. Both visits had required weeks of planning. Today, all I did was say yes. Charlotte picked up our tickets from will-call without breaking stride and we found our seats with enough time to read the program before the opera began.

I looked toward the stage. “These are wonderful seats, Charlotte. Thank you.”

“I have high standards,” Charlotte said with quiet satisfaction.

I was reading the conductor’s biography when I noticed the empty seat beside Charlotte. “Is someone joining us?”

Charlotte glanced at the seat. There was a small pause before she answered. “No,” she said simply.

The lights began to dim before I could ask anything further. The overture started, the stage lit, and the afternoon disappeared into Donizetti, who had, as Charlotte had promised, something to say.

It was a beautiful performance. L’elisir d’amore was a comedy about a young man who buys what he believes is a magic love potion to win the woman he loves. By the end, it seemed the magic mattered far less than the timing. They simply discovered, at different speeds, that love had already arrived, that it had been in the room the whole time, waiting for them to stop mistaking it for something else.

My mind wandered to the conservatory. Strong hands. Broad shoulders. Rain beneath glass.

The second act began soon after. The soprano had the type of voice that made the theatre feel smaller, so powerful she seemed closer than she was. Charlotte spent most of the act leaning forward ever so slightly. Her purse remained on the empty seat beside her. She was completely absorbed, the novelist temporarily lost in the performance.

When the lights came up at the end, she sat back and exhaled.

“Well,” she said after a moment.

“Yes,” I agreed.

We filed out with the rest of the audience into the afternoon sun. The street had the unmistakable feel of a post-matinee Saturday, with people emerging from theatre doors carrying a little of the delight from the performance back into the city with them.

Charlotte was still talking about the second act as we walked, and I was mostly agreeing with her.

“Una furtiva lagrima gets me every time,” she said. “She doesn’t tell him how she feels. He sees one tear in her eye, something she tried to hide from him, and suddenly he knows. She isn’t as unaffected as she wants him to believe.”

I smiled.

“There it is,” Charlotte said.

“What?”