The building in town was clean in the way places are clean when they’re designed to erase feeling. Pale walls. Neutral carpet. Doors that softened their own sound when they closed.
A receptionist smiled at me like an automatic response.
“Name?”
I gave it.
She typed it and nodded, then handed me a badge with the word VISITOR printed too large, as if identity should be worn.
I followed a corridor into a room with a long table and three chairs on the far side.
Two people were already seated.
One was the woman from my kitchen.
The other I hadn’t seen.
The third chair belonged to the man who watched.
He entered last.
Not hurried. Not dramatic.
He sat as if the chair had been waiting for him all along.
“Thank you for coming,” the woman said.
I sat.
The bond did not flare. It did n
