Chapter 92 Isadora

Chapter 92 Isadora
Marco brought her on a Wednesday morning with the energy of a man presenting something he was extremely proud of and trying very hard not to show how proud he was, which meant he was talking more than usual and gesturing with his good arm and introducing Isadora to the estate like a tour guide who had personal feelings about every room.

Isadora let him do it for exactly the right amount of time before she looked at me across the entrance hall with an expression that said she was aware of what he was doing and found it completely endearing and was never going to tell him that.

She was tall and dark haired with the kind of direct gaze that made you feel immediately that you were being seen properly rather than just looked at. She shook my hand and said it was good to finally meet me and meant it completely, which was its own kind of thing in a world where people said things they didn't mean as a matter of course.

"He talks about you constantly," she said, nodding toward Marco.

"Good things I hope," I said.

"Mostly," she said. "There was one story about a glass that I wasn't entirely sure how to interpret."

I looked at Dante across the entrance hall and he looked back at me with the expression of a man who was not going to involve himself in this conversation under any circumstances.

Within twenty minutes of arriving Marco and Dante had disappeared into the study over something operational that apparently could not wait, which Marco was visibly frustrated about and Dante was visibly unsurprised by, and Isadora and I were standing in the entrance hall looking at the closed study door and making the same silent assessment of the situation simultaneously.

"Garden?" I said.

"Absolutely," she said.

We went out through the side door and into the morning and the rose beds were doing their full late season thing, red and white and completely unbothered by anything happening inside the house, and we walked the southern path side by side with Biscuit appearing from somewhere and installing himself between us with the proprietary ease of a cat who had decided he was part of this conversation.

Isadora looked down at him. "Is that the famous Biscuit?"

"He would say there is no other kind of famous," I said.

She laughed and it was a real one, unguarded and warm, and something in the garden relaxed between us in the way things relaxed between people when they realised simultaneously that they didn't have to perform anything for each other.

We walked for a while without talking much and that was its own kind of thing, the specific comfort of a silence that didn't need filling because neither person in it felt the need to prove anything to the other one.

Isadora stopped at the bench near the south rose beds and sat down and I sat beside her and Biscuit jumped up between us and she put her hand on him without thinking about it, the automatic gesture of someone who had always been comfortable with animals, and Biscuit accepted it with the dignity of a cat granting an audience.

"How did you survive coming into this world the way you did?" she asked. She said it directly and without softening it, the question of someone who wanted a real answer rather than a comfortable one.

I sat with it for a moment because it deserved a real answer.

"I stopped trying to survive it," I said. "I started trying to understand it. There is a difference and it took me longer than I would like to admit to find it." I looked at the rose beds. "When I was trying to survive it I was always afraid and always planning and never actually present in any of it. When I started trying to understand it I could see it clearly for the first time and once I could see it clearly it stopped being as frightening."

Isadora looked at me for a moment with that direct gaze that saw things properly.

"Marco told me you threw a glass at Dante's head when you first got here," she said.

"He sidesteps it very quickly," I said.

"That is somehow the most romantic thing I have ever heard," she said, entirely seriously.

I looked at her and she looked at me and we both laughed at the same moment, properly, and Biscuit looked between us with the expression of a cat who had decided human behaviour was beyond his ability to explain but was willing to tolerate it.

"I'm going to need you," Isadora said, when we had mostly stopped laughing. She said it plainly and without any drama, the statement of a woman who understood what she was walking into and was being honest about what that required.

"I know," I said.

She nodded and looked at the garden and I looked at the garden and Biscuit settled between us with his tail curled around his feet and the morning was warm and the rose beds were doing their thing and inside the study Marco and Dante were arguing about something that had absolutely nothing to do with either of us.

We sat in the garden for the full twenty minutes and when we went back inside we had not made any formal declarations of friendship or said anything that would have looked significant written down and we had established everything that needed establishing completely.

Some things didn't require stating.

They just became true while you were sitting on a bench in a rose garden with a cat between you on a Wednesday morning in October.