Vivienne's POV
He brought food.
Not as a performance of consideration. Not the calculated gesture of someone who had researched the appropriate thing to bring to a first meeting with a significant person and arrived at the correct answer through strategic thinking. He brought food because he cooked and bringing food was what he did when he was going somewhere that mattered and he wanted to contribute something real rather than something symbolic.
A dish he had prepared that afternoon in whatever kitchen he had access to, carried carefully in the containers I had come to recognise, stacked with the specific neat practicality of someone who took the logistics of care seriously.
My mother opened the door and looked at him and then at the containers and then back at him.
Something moved a
