Page 12

Camille is already at the bar when I arrive, a glass of red wine in front of her and her phone beside it. She sees me and raises a hand, giving me a warm smile. Exactly what I need tonight.

“Sorry I’m late,” I say, leaning in to kiss her cheek. She smells like vanilla.

“You’re five minutes late. I think we can work through it.” She’s dressed nicely in a navy dress and wearing her hair loose. Very attractive.

Out the window, the snow’s starting to fall again, fat flakes drifting past the glass under the streetlights. Camille orders another glass of wine and I get a whiskey, neat.

“So,” she says, setting her menu down. “How’re you holding up in all this snow?”

“Making do. I’ve got the plow guy coming twice a day right now. Feels like it’ll never let up. And Sophie’s home from school, so my life is currently . . . noisier than usual.”

“Oh, your stepdaughter.”

“Yeah.”

“How old is she now?”

“Nineteen.” I have to take a sip of whiskey. God, that sounds young. “She’s studying English. Reads more books in a month than I’ve read in the last five years.”

Camille smiles. “Smart kid.”

I chuckle. “Sometimes too smart for her own good.”

“It must be nice having her home for Christmas,” Camille says.

“It is. The house gets pretty quiet when she’s away.”

“I can imagine. Although I have to admit, I’ve gotten very used to living alone. I don’t even like having overnight guests for more than a couple of days.”

“Really?”

She laughs. “I like my own space. Probably a little too much.”

I smile. Nothing wrong with that. I’ve just never minded having Sophie around.

The conversation moves on. She tells me about a case she’s working on, a property dispute that’s turning ugly, and I find myself genuinely interested. We trade a few stories about difficult clients before the conversation turns to what we’re doing over the holidays.

“There’s a gallery opening on the twenty-eighth,” Camille says. “You should come. Drinks, interesting people . . . something other than sitting around your lake house.”

“What’s wrong with sitting around my lake house?”

She smiles. “Nothing, if you’re eighty.”

“I’ll have you know my lake house is perfectly entertaining.”

“Is that an invitation?”

I smile. “Would you like to come for dinner?”

“I’d love to. The twenty-eighth?”

I laugh. “It’s a date.”

For a while, the evening is genuinely enjoyable. The food arrives—steak for me, salmon for her—and we eat and talk, and it’s easy in the way it’s been easy both times before. She’s sharp and she’s funny. She remembers things I told her two weeks ago and brings them up. When she laughs, her whole face changes. It’s a good laugh. Open and honest.

Then she says something about her client’s teenage son, and my brain snags on the word teenage, and suddenly I’m not in the restaurant anymore. I’m in my kitchen with a blue notebook in my hand, reading about Sophie touching herself, thinking about someone she shouldn’t.

My fork stops halfway to my mouth and I set it down.