"Please don't announce my name," the elderly woman said as the car stopped beneath the golden awning. "I only came in for dinner, just like anyone else."
Her driver, Samuel Price, studied her in the rearview mirror and seemed about to object. He had worked for Margaret Hale long enough to recognize the particular quietness in her voice, the one that meant she had already made up her mind.
Rain slipped down the windows of the dark sedan, blurring the bright letters over the entrance to Golden Harbor, one of Manhattan's most celebrated restaurants. Beyond the glass doors, chandeliers glowed over polished floors, and well-dressed guests were arriving for reservations that had been made weeks earlier.
"You could have called ahead," Samuel said. "They would have prepared the private dining room. You wouldn't have to stand in the rain."
Margaret looked down at the plain navy coat folded across her lap. Under it she wore a soft gray cardigan, a simple blue dress, and sensible shoes that had carried her through more difficult places than an expensive dining room. The pearl earrings she usually wore for public appearances remained in their velvet box at home. She had brought a small leather handbag, an old-fashioned wristwatch, and very little patience for ceremony.
"If they only know how to welcome me when they know my name," she replied, "then I need to see something I would rather not see."
Samuel switched off the engine. He glanced toward the restaurant again, watching a valet hurry forward to open the door of a luxury SUV while a couple emerged beneath a shared umbrella. Margaret's car was just as fine, but she had asked to be let out a few yards from the entrance where the guests being photographed could not see her. Samuel had helped her arrange more important meetings than this one, and yet he understood why her hands rested so tightly together on her handbag.
"I'll be close by," he promised. "Call me if you need anything."
Margaret gave him a smile that made her face look younger. "What I need is a plate of dinner and an honest evening, Samuel. Surely that isn't too much to ask."
She stepped out before he could answer. The night air smelled of wet pavement and the faint salt breeze rolling in from the river, and she paused beneath the awning to look up at the sign. GOLDEN HARBOR had been chosen as a name forty-one years earlier, when the first dining room was hardly larger than a railway carriage and the tables did not match. Back then, the harbor wasn't a symbol of wealth or status; it was Margaret's promise that anyone exhausted by the world could find a warm place to rest.