The first time she came to the house for dinner, she brought Gemma a book about deep-sea creatures because Gemma had gone through a phase about anglerfish, and Gemma sat in her lap for an hour turning pages, and Chadworth stood in his own doorway with a drink in his hand and felt something in his chest come loose that had been clenched for four years.

That was the moment.

He knew it even at the time.

It was not a decision so much as a door swinging open, and he walked through it because he was fifty-two and lonely in a way he had not admitted to a single living person.

They were engaged eleven months later.

He proposed in the garden, at the end of September, badly, without a speech, because he was a man who could address a room of two thousand and could not do this.

Lorelai found out the next morning at breakfast, and she said “okay” and asked to be excused, and Chadworth chalked it up to the natural adjustment of a child.