I met August Vale at breakfast.

Sebastian was already at the table — coffee, newspaper, the contained posture of someone who had been awake for hours. He looked up when I came in. Stood.

That surprised me.

He stood when I came into the room.

Not performing it. Just — did it, the way he might do a reflex thing, and then sat back down with the slight ease of someone who had done it without thinking.

"Nora," he said.

"Good morning." I sat. Looked at the breakfast spread, which was the kind that happened in houses with a Mrs. Chen. "Did you sleep?"

"Adequately." He poured my coffee without asking. The same way he'd done the tea on the drive, which I'd also noticed. "My grandfather will be here shortly. He's in the garden."

"I saw him last night," I said. "From the window."

"He said." Sebastian looked at his newspaper. "He said you looked like someone who understood gardens."

"I sketched the garden from the window for an hour," I said. "I didn't know he could see me."

"He can always see the window." Something moved in his expression — almost fond. "It was my mother's window."

Before I could respond, the door opened.

August Vale came in.

In person he was more than the slow figure in the garden — he had the quality of people who have been significant and still carry it even as the body fails. Tall, careful in his movements, eyes that were Sebastian's exact grey except older and warmer. He looked at me the way he'd looked at me from the garden: like he'd been expecting me specifically.

"My dear," he said. Not granddaughter, not young lady. *My dear.* Like we already had something.

"Mr. Vale," I said.

"August," he said. "Please." He sat at the head of the table. Looked at Sebastian. "You didn't tell me she was an artist."

"I mentioned it," Sebastian said.

"You said illustrator. That's not the same as telling me." He looked at me. "What do you illustrate?"

"Children's books, mostly. I also do architectural sketches. And I paint on commission — mostly people's gardens, actually."

Something in his expression did a thing.

"Whose gardens?" he said.

"Private clients, a few public spaces. I did a series for the botanical gardens in Philadelphia last year." I hesitated. "And I spent an hour last night sketching yours."

"I know," he said. "Show me."

Sebastian looked up from his newspaper.

I looked at August.

"It's in my room," I said. "It was just a quick study—"

"Show me," he said again. Gently.

I got the sketchbook.

He looked at it for a long time. The sketch was rough — late-evening light, the angle from the east wing window, the specific quality of a garden that had been tended the same way for decades, with conviction.

"The rose beds," he said. "You got the angle on the climbers."

"They were the thing that caught my attention," I said.

He looked up at me.

"My wife planted those," he said. "Forty-one years ago." He closed the sketchbook gently. Handed it back. "She died eleven years ago. Every year the climbers come back." He looked at Sebastian. "She has a good eye."

Sebastian was looking at me.

Not at his grandfather. At me.

"Yes," he said. Quietly.

August smiled.

The kind of smile that contained a whole life of knowing things before they'd been said.

"Good," he said. "Now. Tell me how you met. The real version — Sebastian's version was brief and I want the texture."

I met Sebastian's eyes.

He gave the smallest nod.

Tell him what's real. Describe what's in front of you.

"A gallery opening," I said. "I was there for a colleague's show. He was there because he'd bought one of her pieces." I looked at August. "He spent twenty minutes looking at one painting and then came to find me specifically to say it reminded him of your garden."

Complete truth. That was the gallery story Priya had told me. That was the story on paper.

But August was looking at me like he was listening for the thing underneath the story.

"Why you specifically?" he said.

"I was the only person in the room looking at the same painting," I said.

August turned his gaze to Sebastian.

Sebastian was still looking at me.

"Yes," August said, with the particular satisfaction of a man who has been watching people fall in love for eighty years and recognizes the early weather.

"Yes," he said again, softer.

He picked up his coffee.

I looked at Sebastian.

Sebastian looked at his newspaper.

But his coffee cup, when he set it down, was in exactly the spot it hadn't been a moment ago — moved, slightly, by a hand that wasn't quite steady.

I filed that.