Chapter 6 Dinner
CALEB
My father's house had a way of turning everything into a negotiation before you had even sat down at the table.
The guards at the gate who knew your face and still made you wait the full sixty seconds. The gravel driveway that announced your arrival with sound before you could prepare yourself. The lights in the windows that looked warm and welcoming from the outside and felt like the inside of a corporation the moment you crossed the threshold. I had grown up in that house and I had never once felt genuinely at home in it, not even as a child when the concept of home was supposed to be instinctive rather than earned.
I picked up Mia at six thirty.
She came down in the black dress from the press conference with her hair loose and her lips dark red and she looked like someone who had dressed deliberately for a difficult room, who had chosen her armor carefully and checked the fit in the mirror twice before leaving.
You look nervous, she said when she got in.
I am not nervous, I said.
She looked at me.
I am slightly nervous, I said.
Good, she said. It means you understand the stakes.
She put on her seatbelt and looked out the window at the city going dark and I thought about all the ways this dinner could go wrong and decided not to think about them because the list was too long to be useful.
Remember, I said after a while. You do not have to impress him.
I am not trying to impress him, she said. I am trying to survive him.
She said it without drama. Just a fact about the evening.
What does he actually want from tonight, she said.
To assess you, I said. To find your edges. Anything he can use.
She turned to look at me.
Has he ever been unable to find an edge, she said.
I looked at the road for a moment.
Once, I said.
She did not ask what it was.
We drove the rest of the way in quiet that was not uncomfortable, which was something I had not expected from her, this particular kind of easy silence, and I kept noticing things like that about her and putting them somewhere I could not quite name.
My father was already seated when we arrived.
He never stood when people entered. It was a choice he made every single time, deliberate and calculated, putting himself in the position of someone receiving visitors rather than welcoming them. I had watched him do it my entire life and it had taken me until this year to understand that it was not confidence. It was control.
Mia, he said without standing. How good of you to join us.
Thank you for having me, she said.
Her voice was completely steady.
I noted that too.
The table was designed for exactly this kind of discomfort, too long and too formal, the kind of table that made conversations feel like depositions. The food was perfect and the wine was correct and the whole room was arranged with the specific coldness of wealth that had forgotten what warmth was supposed to feel like from the inside.
My father watched Mia the way he watched everything that mattered to him, not quite at her but through her, filing and organizing and building his case in real time.
You manage the team, he said. As your primary employment.
Equipment and program operations, she said. Among other things.
An interesting choice for someone with your academic record, he said.
There was nothing in his voice that sounded like a compliment.
It was available, she said simply. I needed reliable income and it was available.
He glanced at me for a fraction of a second.
I kept my face completely neutral.
The dinner continued in the specific rhythm my father had perfected over decades of extracting useful information from people who thought they were having a pleasant meal. Questions that sounded polite and were not. Pauses that invited people to fill them with things they had not meant to say. Mia answered everything with the clear steady economy of someone who had decided not to give him more than exactly what he asked for.
When he asked about her family she said her mother was a nurse on medical leave and her brother played hockey and she handled most of the household.
Most of the household, he repeated.
Yes, she said.
I watched his expression shift by about a millimeter in the direction of recalculation.
He asked about us eventually. How we had met. When things had changed.
She did not look at me before answering.
I was managing the team when he came in with a problem, she said. I helped him understand it differently. Things changed after that.
A problem, he said.
His public image, she said. His instincts on the ice were excellent but his reputation was creating friction. I helped him see himself more accurately. He did the rest himself.
The table went quiet for a long moment.
My father looked at me.
Then back at her.
He asked if she loved me.
The air in the room changed entirely.
Mia turned her coffee cup slowly in her hands.
I am still getting to know him, she said. That is the only honest answer I can give you right now.
My father nodded once. Slowly. Like she had passed some test she had not known she was taking.
The dinner ended an hour later.
In the car she said nothing until we were through the gate.
He hates me, she said.
He hates everyone, I said.
He knows something is wrong, she said.
He suspects, I said. There is a significant difference between suspecting and knowing.
She was quiet for a moment.
What happens when suspecting becomes knowing, she said.
I kept my eyes on the road.
Then we stop pretending, I said.
She turned to look at me in the dark of the car.
And what does that actually mean, she said.
I thought about it.
I honestly did not know yet. And for the first time in as long as I could remember, the not knowing did not feel like a problem I needed to solve immediately.
It felt like something else entirely.