Alexandre's POV
I said it again that night.
Not in the restaurant — that had been enough for Thursday, the first time, the unrepeated original. Later, at home, after pasta and Gerald's supervisory oversight and Theo's rain-worm debrief and the bedtime story and the quiet of the house after eight.
At the kitchen table. The Seine development plans spread between us — the actual drawings, what fourteen months of work was going to become. She had asked to see them and I had brought them and she had leaned over them in silence for a long time and then looked up and said: it's beautiful.
Not the numbers. Not the environmental impact.
It's beautiful.
And I had looked at the plans — at something I had been looking at for fourteen months as a thing to be managed — and seen what she saw. The w
