Read Chapter 24: — RESPECT

Adrian came to dinner at the Ward flat the following Sunday.

Arthur questioned him with the subtlety of a customs officer.

“What do you want from my daughter?”

“Dad,” Eleanor said.

Adrian did not flinch.

“A life, if she wants the same.”

“And Lily?”

“I won't ask her to call me anything. I won't compete with her father. I will show up.”

Arthur leaned back.

“That sounds rehearsed.”

“I manage guest complaints professionally.”

Arthur almost smiled.

Later Eleanor and Adrian argued in the kitchen about children.

Adrian had once ended his marriage partly because Victoria did not want to pause her career to have a baby. He admitted he still wanted a child someday.

“A son?” Eleanor asked.

“A child.”

“You said son first.”

Adrian paused.

Eleanor's chest tightened. “Lily hears things like that. She already worries daughters are somehow second choice.”

He did not defend himself.

“You're right.”

It was one of the reasons she loved him.

Not because he never said the wrong thing.

Because he could be corrected without treating correction as defeat.

The next day he took Lily to a bookshop and let her choose a ridiculous illustrated atlas. He did not mention the conversation.

He simply stayed on the floor beside her while she found countries she wanted to visit.