to."
"Mm." He was not listening. He was already halfway into the corridor, holding the door. "We should celebrate. Not tonight — tomorrow. I've got dinner with the Palazzo Spinelli people. But tomorrow."
At the restaurant off Via San Lorenzo he ordered the wine without consulting her, which was fine because he ordered the wine she would have ordered. He asked good questions about the lighthouse — the kind of questions a senior architect asks to show he is interested without giving the site more attention than it deserves. How long would it take. Would she need to stay out there or could she commute. Whether the ministry would cover travel. What the scope probably was.
"A month," she said. "Six weeks at the outside. Survey, historical analysis, condition report, scoped plan. I'd go out in October. Be back by — I don't know. Early December, maybe. The worst of the autumn gales hit from the middle of November, so I'd want to be done the structural work before that."
He nodded, refilling her glass. "Good. That puts you back in plenty of time."
"In plenty of time for what?"
He looked at her, not unkindly. "Giulia. The engagement party. We talked about November."
She had forgotten. She had genuinely forgotten. It was not a thing one forgot, usually, and she watched herself fail to feel properly alarmed at having forgotten it.
"Of course," she said. "November. I'll be done by then."
"You'll be done by then."
Later, walking back toward his car, he took her hand the way he always did, threading his fingers through hers with the small pressure that meant you are with me, we are a thing, the evening is good. She squeezed back on cue. Around them Florence was doing its Florentine thing, the tourists thinning out for the night, a woman calling to her dog in Via dei Benci,
🤖 The author declared this story as written with the help of AI.