I arrive ten minutes early, and I sit with my water, and I go through what I know.
Eleanor Cross. Sixty years old. Boston. Caden's mother. She knew my mother when they were young women. She looked at me the first time we met and said *you have her eyes* and then said nothing else about it for the rest of the evening, and I have been carrying that sentence for two weeks like a stone in my coat pocket.
I have a version of this lunch built. Careful, Boston woman. Formal. Inspecting her son's choice with the particular attention of someone who has standards and is deciding whether I meet them.
I know better than to trust versions I build before the thing actually happens. Every version I have built in this story has been wrong.
She walks in at exactly one o'clock.
She is not what I built.
