"I meant somewhere else. With chairs that aren't folding."
Ethan looked at her. There was nothing in her expression to suggest a business agenda, and that made the question more complicated than it had any right to be. He thought of Claire, of Lily waiting at home with June, of the way people in town would talk if they saw them together. Then he thought of sitting across from Victoria and talking about something other than freight routes.
"I have to get home," he said finally. "Lily and I make pizza on Thursdays."
Victoria nodded too quickly. "Of course."
"But there's a diner near the feed store," he added. "They make coffee that actually tastes like coffee. Next week, maybe. During daylight hours, before the town invents a scandal."
She let out a breath that might have been a laugh. "That sounds suspiciously like an appointment."
"It sounds like coffee," Ethan said. "Don't let your father turn it into a wedding."
"I'll do my best."
He drove home through the rain, annoyed with himself for checking his phone twice even though she had no reason to call. Victoria returned to the city with an entire team waiting for instructions and a board presentation that needed to be rewritten. She found the work no less difficult than it had been that morning. But for the first time in a very long while, she had something on her calendar that she was looking forward to for no reason related to its revenue potential.
At dinner that evening, Lily sprinkled cheese over the pizza dough and asked whether people could have two different kinds of happy memories at once. Ethan stopped rolling the crust. "Of course they can. Why?"
"Because I like when Ms. Hayes comes here," she said. "And I still like remembering Mommy. I wanted to make sure those don't fight."
Ethan put down the rolling pin. He crouched beside her, conscious of the flour dusting her nose and the way her mother used to tilt her head when asking a serious question. "They don't fight," he said. "Loving someone we miss doesn't use up all the room in our hearts. There's still space for good things we haven't met yet."
Lily accepted this with the practical generosity children sometimes have. "Good," she said. "Then we can put extra cheese on the pizza. Mommy liked that too."
Ethan kissed the top of her head and went back to work. Later, after she was asleep, he stood on the porch watching rain drift across the repaired gate. He realized he had just told his daughter something he had not truly believed for himself until he said it aloud.
The diner smelled of cinnamon toast, frying potatoes, and rain-soaked coats. Ethan arrived seven minutes early the following Thursday and found Victoria already sitting at a booth near the back window. She had a plain gray sweater on beneath her coat and a pair of glasses she wasn't wearing when television cameras were around. A notebook lay on the table, but it was closed.