On Saturday we returned to the apartment around seven-thirty in the evening, since we’d decided to fortify ourselves with some tapas before Lawrence and my father showed up. I didn’t want to call it my last meal, because I thought that would be jinxing things before we even got started, but I couldn’t help feeling as if our little feast might be that very thing. Instead, I called it Connor’s birthday dinner, promising him that we’d do something more festive after…well, afterward. In fact, I made something of a show of getting us reservations the following evening at the Cottage, his favorite restaurant in town. All perfectly normal.
Whether he saw through my pretense, I wasn’t sure, but he didn’t comment, only said that sounded great and it was only a birthday, nothing to get that fussed
