He walked in at eleven forty three.
I knew it was him before I saw him because Margaret's posture changed. The smallest degree. A straightening that was not about correction because she was already perfectly straight. It was the particular adjustment of a woman who loves someone and will not perform that love openly but cannot entirely hide it when he enters a room.
I turned.
He stopped when he saw me.
Not a dramatic stop. Just a pause, one breath long, while his eyes moved from me to his mother and back to me and the expression on his face did something complicated that settled quickly back into composure.
He crossed the room and pulled out the chair beside me and sat down and looked at his mother and said: you went to see her mother.
Margaret said: I needed information I did not ha
