He said: the map directions. The coffee. The ferry. All of it.
I said: so am I.
He said: what would you have done if you’d said no?
I said: gone back to the hotel and had dinner alone and gone to sleep.
He said: and been fine.
I said: yes.
He said: but not this.
I said: no. Not this.
He said: this is better.
I said: yes. This is much better.
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he said: Margaret.
I said: yes.
He said: I’m going to say something and I want you to know that I’m not entirely sure how to say it.
I said: all right.
He said: I have enjoyed this week enormously.
He said: more than I have enjoyed anything in four years.
He said: you are the most interesting person I have met since Moira.
He said: and Moira was the most interesting person I had ever met.
I said: David.
He said: yes.
I said: I feel the same.
He said: you do.
I said: yes.
He said: would you be willing to explore what that means?
He said: I don’t know exactly what I’m proposing.
He said: I’m not a twenty-year-old who has clear expectations.
He said: I’m just saying that whatever this is.
He said: I’d like it to continue.
I said: I think I would too.
He said: you think.
I said: I know.
He smiled.
He said: good.
He said: tomorrow I’m going to take you to a restaurant I’ve wanted to try.
He said: for our last evening.
He said: my last surprise.
I said: you have been surprising me for a week.
He said: one more.
On the final evening, David took me to a small restaurant in the old part of the city, on a street so narrow that the restaurant’s tables were set up partly on the stone footpath outside, overlooking a harbor view that was, in the specific evening light, exactly the kind of beauty that makes you understand why people write poems about places.
We arrived.
The waiter came to meet us.
He was young, perhaps twenty-five, and he smiled at David with the warmth of recognition.
He said: so nice to see you again, Mr. Bennett.
He said it before he could stop himself.
He realized his mistake immediately.
I saw it on his face.
He looked at David.
David’s expression shifted.
Not dramatically.
Just slightly.
The slight shift of someone who has been caught at something small and who is deciding how to manage it.
He said: Matteo, thank you.
He said: can we have the corner table?
Matteo showed us to the corner table and retreated with the specific speed of someone who understands they have complicated a situation.
I sat.
David sat.
I did not say anything immediately.
I was thinking.
Before I had found the words, David’s phone rang.
He looked at it.
He said: I’m so sorry. I need to take this. Give me one minute.
He stood and walked toward the back of the restaurant.
One minute became five.
Five became ten.
Fifteen.
I sat at the corner table with the harbor view and I thought about: so nice to see you again, Mr. Bennett.
He had told me specifically that he had never been to this restaurant.
He had said: I have wanted to try this place all week.
He said he had wanted to try it.
Not that he had been there before.
But the waiter had said: again.
I thought about this for fifteen minutes.
Then I got up.
I walked toward the back of the restaurant.
The kitchen was on the left.
On the right was a short corridor that led to a small private courtyard where the restaurant kept its overflow tables and, presumably, its staff entrance.
David’s voice was coming from the courtyard.
He was speaking quietly.
I heard a woman’s voice on the phone, loud enough to be audible but not loud enough to be distinct.
I took one more step.
I heard David’s voice clearly.
He said: no, she doesn’t know.
He said: yes. I know. I know.
He said: Rosie, I need you to listen to me.
He said: I am going to tell her tonight.
He said: I was always going to tell her tonight.
He said: I promise you.
He paused.
He said: because she deserves to know the truth.
He said: and because if she can’t accept it.
He paused again.
He said: then I’ll understand.
He said: but I think she can.
He said: I think she’s that kind of person.
Long pause.
He said: yes.
He said: I love you too.
He said: I’ll call you when it’s done.
I stepped back.
I walked back to the table.
I sat down.
I picked up the menu.
I looked at it without reading it.
I was very still.
I was thinking.
Three things I knew.
He had been to this restaurant before.
He had told someone named Rosie that Margaret did not know something.
He had said he was going to tell me tonight.
One thing I did not know.
What I did not know.
Two possibilities my mind had produced before he returned to the table.
The first was the obvious one.
Rosie was someone he had not told me about.
Someone significant enough to say I love you to.
The specific possibility that a widower of four years on a trip to Malta might have a life in Edinburgh that did not match the week he had spent with me.
The second was something else.
I did not know what the second was yet.
Only that it existed.
Because the voice on the phone had been clear.
Because when he said I love you too, he had said it with the specific warmth of someone who loves someone in the way you love the people you have always loved, not a new love, an old one.
And the word too implied she had said it first.
And the way he said it was not the way you say it to a woman you are concealing.
It was the way you say it when you are not hiding at all.
David came back to the table.
He sat down.
He put his phone face-down.
He looked at me.
He said: Margaret.
I said: yes.
He said: I have something to tell you.
I said: all right.
He said: I have not been entirely honest with you.
I said: I know.
He said: you know?
I said: I followed you.
He was quiet for a moment.
He said: you heard.
I said: some of it.
He said: Margaret.
He said: I should have told you at the beginning.
He said: I was going to tell you at the beginning.
He said: and then I thought.
He said: if I tell her now she might not want to spend the week with me.
He said: and I desperately wanted to spend the week with you.
He said: and that was cowardly of me.
He said: and I’m sorry.
I said: tell me now.
He said: Rosie is my daughter.
He said: she is twenty-eight.
He said: she lives in Edinburgh.
He said: she is the reason I came to Malta.
I said: what do you mean.
He said: when Moira died.
He said: Rosie took it very hard.
He said: harder than I did, in some ways, because she was younger and because Moira was her mother.
He said: and she watched me after Moira died.
He said: she watched me go quiet and get smaller.
He said: and last December she called me and she said: Dad.
He said: she said: you have been in that house for four years.
He said: she said: when was the last time you did something just because it made you happy?
I put my hand on the table.
He looked at it.
He said: she booked my ticket.
He said: she told me to say yes to everything.
He said: she said: Dad, Mum would want you to live.
He said: she made me promise.
He said: and then she called me every day this week.
He said: because she wanted to know how it was going.
He said: and tonight I told her about you.
He said: and she cried.
He said: happy crying.
He said: and she said: tell her, Dad.
He said: tell her the whole story.
He said: she’ll understand.
He said: and I said: how do you know?
He said: and Rosie said: because she went to Malta alone at sixty-seven and said yes to a stranger on a street.
He said: that’s someone who understands.
He said: I told her I thought you were that kind of person.
He said: she agreed.
I said: you told her about me.
He said: everything.
