Claire’s father came to the penthouse on a Saturday.
She had made the invitation carefully, a proper dinner, the kind her mother would have called formal if formal meant her best tablecloth and dishes she only used for occasions, which in the penthouse context translated to Nathaniel in a real shirt and Claire cooking for three hours while he helpfully stood in the kitchen doorway asking questions about what each thing was.
“It is a braise,” she said.
“And braising is,” he said.
“Cooking something slowly in liquid until it becomes something better than it was,” she said.
He looked at the pot for a moment. “I relate to that,” he said.
She threw a dish towel at him.
Her father arrived at seven with a bottle of wine he had clearly agonized over, which meant he had called Dana, because
