The lock clicked. Claire climbed three flights of stairs and found him waiting at the open apartment door in a clean gray sweater and dark trousers. He welcomed her without embarrassment, moving a stack of books from the chair beside the window. The room was small and carefully ordered, with a narrow kitchen, a bed against the far wall, and books arranged in even columns beside a table covered in mathematical notes.
She handed him the bag of belongings immediately. "These were left at the office. Teresa kept them safe."
Owen opened it, checked the thermos and gloves, and took out the notebook. His relief was brief but visible. "Thank you. I wondered where that went."
Claire remained standing. "Before we talk about anything else, I need to tell you something. I looked inside it. At first I thought I was finding contact information, but I read pages I should not have read. I'm sorry."
He looked down at the cover. For the first time since their reunion, the calm in his face shifted into something more guarded. He did not raise his voice, but the question he asked was more difficult than anger would have been. "How much did you read?"
"Enough to know you wrote about your parents and your work. More than I had any right to. I won't repeat it or use it to make decisions about you."
Owen placed the notebook carefully on the table. "Those pages aren't an explanation I wrote for anybody else. Some of them took years before I could write them at all."
"I understand," she said, and caught herself. "No. I don't fully understand. But I know I crossed a boundary."
He was quiet for a while. Outside, a truck moved down the street and a child called to someone from a window across the courtyard. Owen finally pulled out the chair for her and sat on the edge of the bed opposite. He had chosen to invite her into his home, and he was still deciding whether that choice had been wise.
"I appreciate the apology," he said. "I need you to respect that boundary from here on."
"I will. And if you don't want to discuss work after that, I'll leave."
He looked at her for a long moment before speaking. "You came a long way to return a thermos. I imagine there's something else."
Claire smiled faintly, grateful for the opening but careful not to treat it as forgiveness already granted. She told him that the optimization project had reached another difficult boundary, that Marcus wanted to hear his thinking, and that the company had reviewed the circumstances of the first incident. She explained the independent assessment process and the proposed internal consulting position, with a written scope and professional pay. She did not make the offer sound like rescue, because Owen had repeatedly made clear that rescue was not what he wanted.
"I'd like to bring you back," she said. "Not because I feel guilty, though I do. Because the engineering team has work you might want to do, and because your way of thinking could help them. If you don't want it, I'll respect that."