She noticed him watching her differently on Saturday.
Not the usual watching — the focused complete attention she had learned to recognize as his particular form of presence. This was different. More deliberate. The particular quality of someone who was gathering themselves toward something.
She noticed it at breakfast.
At the drafting table.
At dinner when he was quieter than usual and Rosa looked at him twice with the expression she used when she knew something was happening and had decided to stay out of it.
She noticed it and said nothing.
She had learned when to wait.
He asked her to walk with him after dinner.
Not the garden — he took her through the back gate and along the path that ran behind the property, the one she hadn't known existed until the fourth week when Nico had
