CHAPTER 18Len
How different it felt after that day. Len could barely wait to see Sarah every afternoon, and he sensed that she knew it. She smiled at him as his eyes followed her around the room. Whenever he asked her if she could stay, just for a minute, just for one glass of wine, she shook her head, but she wasn’t cruel about it.
Len wasn’t oblivious to the pattern of her refusals, but he pretended to be. Even knowing what her response would be, he asked anyway, because he even liked how she refused him, shaking her head just slightly, her eyes kind. And then, one Thursday evening, when he had invited her to dinner for the umpteenth time, she lifted the lid of the pot on the stove and sniffed at it appraisingly. Len held his breath.
“Okay,” she said at last. “I’ll stay.”
Len could n
