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Chuck took his time weaving through the empty tables. The sky shone bright gray through the wall of windows.

Helen didn’t stand. She wore an ivory suit and a bob cut to the exact line of her jaw.

Chuck sat and kept his hands on his knees under the table where they couldn’t get him into any messes.

A busboy filled Chuck’s water glass. Chuck told him “Thanks, my man,” and left the glass sweating where it stood.

“Charles.” She squared her teacup to its saucer. “Winnie tells me you do the best voices.”

“She’s an easy crowd. And my name is Chuck.”

“She was three when her mother left us.” Helen poured steadily, no rattle in the pot. “I drove up that week. I sat in that store while Niall priced paperbacks and pretended his hands worked. You weren’t here for that part.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then you’ll forgive the arithmetic.” She set the teapot down without a sound. “Coach Dillard’s Honda. Ray Gunderson’s boat. A table thrown at a man in front of three cameras and a city council on Christmas Eve. A sister in Portland who hasn’t had you home to dinner in three years, and a niece who will have to be introduced, if ever.” Her voice never came up off the tablecloth. “Mind you, none of that is tittle-tattle. I have friends, locals who were glad to see you working. Again.”

“All true,” Chuck said. At least she didn’t know about the roses. “Every word of it.”

“Why bother to lie?” She graced him with a nonfat smile, slim and sly.

The busboy came for the pitcher and went away.

“Your father had hands too. That’s what they tell me up here. Fixed anything, finished nothing, and put his boy out on the road at seventeen.”

“Younger than that.” Chuck worked his thumbnail into the seam of his jeans. Both hands stayed on his knees. “Say the plain thing,” he said. “I hate dancing around.”

“A friend mentioned a position open in Seattle.” She turned her phone face down. “Double the money. Full control. Prestige. Your name on the front of it.”

“Did you make that happen?”

“No.” She took her time with the cream. “I don’t do favors for men I’m showing the door. It’s an opportunity.”

“For whom?”

She turned then and looked out the wide windows at the cloudy sky, as if expecting rain. “My daughter sends postcards, you know.” Helen refolded her napkin along its old crease. “To me. Not to the child. Four in six years.”

“The child.”

She pursed her lips. “Winifred.”

“That’s not my doing. And it’s not Niall’s either, and it sure as hell isn’t on a nine-year-old who calls her grandma ma’am.” Chuck leaned in a half inch. “Six years you’ve had to be decent to that man, and you’ve spent every one of them testing him like a rotten floor. Not many folks would give you the chance. But Niall cares.”

Helen held her cup at her chin until his sentences ran out, then drank.

“I’m not asking you to leave,” she said.

“Could have fooled me.”

“I’m asking you to leave now, while it’s still cookies and a treehouse. Not in April, when it’s a school and a fever at four a.m. and a little girl who sets your place even when you aren’t coming to dinner.” She drew the check toward herself and signed it against the tablecloth, in a hotel she’d never agree to sleep in. “Go be excellent somewhere. I’ll see your story gets told kindly here. That is a gift, Mr. Mitchum, and I will only offer it the once.”

“I’m sticking around.”

“Everyone means forever when they say it.” She gathered her bag. “Which is why forever is worth so little.” Aiming herself at the lobby, she left, walking carefully like she was in heels even though they were ballet flats.

He stayed in the chair while she crossed the dining room, and he kept his hands still. She paused to say something to Kit in the blazer, and he looked to Chuck and nodded. The doors swung shut behind her twice before they settled.

Chuck stood and walked out onto the deck to get to the parking lot.