That was, I think, the most he could imagine anyone doing, and it was more than most would offer, and I do not fault him for it.

But somewhere between his words and my own hearing of them, the idea had already slipped its intended shape and become something else entirely, something I did not yet have the courage to say out loud even to myself, sitting there in that booth.

Because here is the thing Greg did not know about me, the thing that made his casual suggestion land in me like a struck bell.

I had spent the previous nine years of my life alone, deliberately, having walked away from a family and a fortune and a life that had hollowed me out.