Emma carried the flashlight while Caleb worked. Mrs. Parker made cocoa afterward and said the new house had better not turn them into people too important to return to the old neighborhood.
"No chance," Caleb said. "Emma would revoke my professional license."
Victoria began visiting the family in small, careful ways. The first time she came to supper, she brought a cake from a bakery Caleb had once seen in a magazine and set it down on the kitchen counter as though embarrassed by its beautiful box. Emma studied the ribbon and asked whether Victoria had made the cake herself. When she said no, Emma informed her that real cakes were the ones people made at home and invited her to help with pancakes instead.
Victoria had negotiated air-service agreements in three languages and had once endured a six-hour board meeting without looking at her notes. She had never cooked pancakes successfully. By the end of the evening, one was burned, one was raw in the middle, and Emma was laughing so hard she had to sit on the floor. Caleb rescued the pan while Victoria wiped flour from the sleeve of a jacket that cost more than his first car.
"I may be underqualified for this position," Victoria said gravely.
"We have a training program for that," Emma replied.
They ate dinner at the kitchen table, and for the first time in years Victoria found herself talking about something that would never appear in a quarterly report. She told Emma that her mother used to paint birds with crooked wings and that she had kept three paintings even after moving offices. Emma asked to see them. Victoria promised to bring photographs next time, then caught Caleb watching her with an expression she could not quite read.
"What?" she asked after Emma went to wash her hands.
"Nothing. I was just thinking you don't look much like the person I met in the hangar."
"That's because I haven't shouted at anybody today."
"I meant you look happier."
Victoria turned toward the window. For a moment she felt the old instinct to dismiss the observation before it became personal. Then she remembered what it had taken Caleb to stand in a room full of people who thought he did not belong. "I think I am," she said.
They were careful with whatever was growing between them. Caleb had lost a wife he loved, and he would not let loneliness persuade him to invite somebody into Emma's life before he understood what the invitation meant. Victoria had spent most of her adult life being approached by people who wanted access to her money, her contacts, or the appearance of intimacy with a powerful woman. She did not know how to be ordinary with somebody, and the fact that Caleb asked nothing from her beyond what they had agreed professionally made her both comfortable and uncertain.