She called Daniel the week before and asked if she could come for Sunday lunch, see the place. He asked me. I said yes. She texted me that she was looking forward to it, which was a small thing and not nothing.
She arrived at noon. She rang the bell.
She had not rung the bell in the three months she’d lived here. She had had a key, which she’d given back on moving day, and she had walked in and out as she pleased. Ringing the bell was a choice and we both knew it.
I opened the door.
She had brought a pie. Grocery store, not homemade. This was also a choice.
We had lunch: Daniel’s cooking, a pasta dish he’d been making since college. It was good in the casual, unpretentious way of food a person knows how to make without thinking about it. Patricia ate and asked about work and I answered and asked about the new apartment.
She said the apartment was fine. She said “fine” in a way that I took to mean: not what she’d imagined for this stage of her life, but adequate and hers, and hers is something.
She said the parking was better than she expected. She said this with a small, self-aware something in her expression, and I understood that she was aware of the irony of the parking having been her most-cited objection to several earlier options.
I said: “I’m glad the parking worked out.”
She said: “Me too.”