Cassandra was at the screen door before he reached the second porch step.
Drew did not see her at first. He saw the geraniums in the planter Janet had repotted last weekend, the small grey cat from the neighbor's yard sitting on the railing, and the brass house number that needed polishing. He saw all of it because he was not looking at the door. His left thumb moved against the side of his forefinger in a tight slow circle.
When he looked up, she was watching the thumb.
She was sixteen, and shorter than he had expected, and her hair was pulled back in the kind of severe practical knot that meant she had decided how to look an hour before the doorbell rang. Her hand rested flat on the screen door's lower frame. She had not yet opened it.
"Hi," Drew said.
"Hi." She pushed the door. It made the small flat hiss he had heard twice on the phone when Janet had called from this room. "Mom's in the kitchen."
He stepped through carrying the grocery bag. Two bottles of San Pellegrino, a small jar of fig jam, a baguette he had bought at a place AURORA-7 had filed three weeks ago under bakeries: confirmed acceptable by Dr. Fraiser preference signature. The bag was heavier than it needed to be. He had walked the grocery store for forty minutes and bought the wrong things twice.
"You can put that on the counter," Cassandra said.
She did not introduce herself. She walked ahead of him through the small front hall, past a framed photograph he did not let himself examine in detail because it was Janet at a beach he had not been to with her, and into the kitchen.
The kitchen smelled of roasted garlic and lemon and a faint sweetness that resolved as he crossed the threshold into rosemary. Janet was at the stove. Her hair was loose, which it never was at the mountain, and she was wearing a navy sweater he had not seen before. The earring was in her left ear. The small gold stud. He had clocked it once at the cafeteria, three weeks ago, and AURORA-7 had logged it without comment.
"You came," Janet said.
"You said two." His thumb stilled. Stop. She is right here. "I'm a minute early."
"You're never a minute early. You're seven minutes early or you're three minutes late." She crossed the kitchen, kissed him on the cheek in front of her daughter, took the bag from his hand. "Cass, this is Drew. Drew, Cassandra."
"We met at the door," Cassandra said.
She was already at the table, setting out napkins. Her movements were economical in the way Drew's were economical, which was the first thing he noticed about her that he had not been warned about. The second thing was that she had not smiled.
"I made a salad," Janet said. She was unloading the bag. Her left hand drifted up. The fingers touched the stud. "She— Cass made the salad herself."
Cassandra set down a napkin and looked at her mother. Her face did not move. Drew watched her not move.
"It's a good salad," Cassandra said.
The roast came out at 1422 by the clock above the sink, which Drew did not check, and which he knew the reading of anyway. Janet pulled it from the oven and the thermometer read 152.
"Hm," Janet said.
She did not say it accusingly. She said it the way she said it at the mountain when an x-ray came back fine but not quite the fine she had expected. Drew watched the thermometer. Medium-well. The roast had been planned for medium-rare. He had eaten dinner at her house once before, on a Tuesday three weeks ago, and the chicken that time had been five minutes overcooked.
His mind began, against his will, to construct the calculation. Oven calibration off by approximately eleven degrees. The variance is consistent. The chicken three weeks ago was also—
He stopped. He stopped because Cassandra was looking at him.
"You alright?" she said.
"Yes."
"You went somewhere for a second."
"I came back."
She held the look one beat longer than he could parse. Then she carried the salad to the table.
Janet sliced the roast. Janet did not apologize for the doneness, which was correct because there was nothing to apologize for. Drew watched her decide not to apologize and watched himself decide not to mention oven calibration and felt, with a small reliable heat at the back of his throat, that he was being assessed by someone who had not been informed of the criteria but was running her own anyway.
"Cass got into the AP physics program," Janet said, sitting.
"That's hard," Drew said. He had not known there was an AP physics program. AURORA-7 had not flagged it. AURORA-7 was in low-power background mode at his request, which meant she would not flag things, which meant he was operating without his usual safety net in the most consequential dinner of his year. Good. Operate.
"It's two semesters early," Janet said.
"It's not that early," Cassandra said.
"It's early."
"There's a girl in my class who started a year before me."
"There's a girl in your class who is statistically a once-in-a-decade event, Cass."
Cassandra shrugged. The shrug was small and Drew filed it as deflection, comfortable: she has heard this praise from her mother often enough to have a procedure for it.
"What are you reading?" he asked.
"Right now?"
"In the program. What's the unit."
She lifted a fork. Set it down. He saw her decide whether to test him. He saw her decide to.
"Special relativity," she said. "Length contraction."
"Hm." He took a bite of the roast. It was, in fact, fine medium-well. "Have they had you do the ladder paradox yet?"
She tilted her head. The tilt was Janet's. He had not known the tilt was Janet's. "The barn?"
"The barn. The ladder runs at relativistic speed, the doors close at both ends, both observers are right, the ladder fits and doesn't fit at the same time."
"That's stupid," Cassandra said.
"It's stupid for about three weeks and then it isn't."
"Why isn't it."
He chewed. He swallowed. He thought, Don't lecture. She will know if you lecture. "Because at some point you figure out it isn't a contradiction, it's a translation problem. The barn and the ladder are using different rulers. They're both telling the truth. They just aren't telling the same truth."
Cassandra ate her salad.
"My mom said you used to be in business," she said.
"I was."
"What kind."
"Project management. I made spreadsheets and yelled at vendors."
"And now you work at the mountain."
"Now I work at the mountain."
"Doing what."
He took a sip of water. Janet's left hand moved up. Her fingers found the stud.
"I run a small division," Drew said. "Resources."
"Resources."
"It's a boring word for the work."
Cassandra looked at him. Looked at the salad. Looked at her mother, who was no longer looking at the stud. Looked back at him.
"Okay," she said.
The dishes were Drew's. Janet had told him this on the phone on Thursday in a tone that suggested it was not negotiable and that he should not pretend it was. He stood at the sink at 1547 with the cuffs of his shirt rolled and his hands in water hotter than the water he used at the mountain, and Cassandra brought him a plate.
"You wash, I dry," she said.
He had been about to say the opposite. He took the plate from her. The water hissed against the ceramic.
They worked through three plates in silence. The sound of water running, of Cassandra's towel moving in the slow precise way it moved, of Janet on the phone in the front room with her mother in a voice that meant the conversation was about Cassandra. Drew did not let his thumb move. He held the sponge in his left hand and the next plate in his right and concentrated on the motion of his hands and not on the inventory of every word he had said at the dinner table.
Cassandra handed him another plate to wash.
"You don't have to be charming," she said.
Drew did not look up. He scrubbed at a small ring of fat on the rim.
"My mom already likes you," Cassandra said. "She told me. She's been telling me for like a month."
He rinsed the plate. He handed it to her. She took it. He took the next one.
He did not answer. He did not look at her. He did not say thank you and he did not say I know and he did not say the thing he wanted to say which was I am afraid of being someone you don't like. He just scrubbed the next plate, and the next, and at one point he felt her shoulder bump his arm because she had moved closer to set down a dried bowl, and she did not move away after, and the silence kept going.
When the last plate was dry Cassandra wiped her hands on the towel and folded it twice and hung it on the oven handle in a pattern that was not the way Janet folded it.
Then she walked to the table.
She set out four placemats. The blue ones. She lined them up one to each side of the table, square and even, and at the place opposite her mother's usual seat she set a fork and a knife and a small water glass.
Janet came in from the front room with the phone still in her hand. She saw the table. She did not say anything. The phone was still pressed to her ear and her mother on the other end of the line was talking and Janet was not listening. Her eyes were on Cassandra. Her left hand drifted up. Her fingers found the stud.
"Yeah, Mom," Janet said into the phone. "Yeah. Tuesday. I'll call you back."
She hung up.
"Tuesday?" Drew said.
"Tuesday at six," Cassandra said, not looking at him. "Don't be a minute early."
⚜ ━━━━ ROYAL PROCLAMATION ━━━━ ⚜
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