Chapter 3: The Archaeology of Grief

Tanya appeared at his desk at 4:47 PM, which Henry knew because he’d been watching the clock with the kind of dread usually reserved for terminal diagnoses.

“So,” she said, leaning against his doorframe with her arms crossed, “Paul told me you paid for my car.”

Henry’s fingers stilled on his keyboard. “He wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

“I asked him directly. He’s a terrible liar.” She tilted her head, studying him. “Four thousand dollars, Dr. Gordon. That’s not a small favor.”

“You needed your car repaired.”

“And you needed to pay for it? Why?”

Henry had no good answer for this. The truth—that he’d done it on impulse, that he couldn’t bear the thought of her struggling, that something about her relentless optimism made him want to protect it—was too revealing. “Consider it a loan.”

“A loan.” Tanya’s expression softened. “You know I can’t pay you back. Not anytime soon.”

“Then consider it a gift.”

“I don’t accept gifts that expensive from people I barely know.”

“We’ve spent two weeks in a car together. That’s more time than I spend with most people in a year.”

She laughed, but it was gentler than her usual laugh. “That’s really sad, Dr. Gordon.”

“Henry,” he said, surprising himself. “You can call me Henry.”

Something shifted in her expression—pleasure, maybe, or surprise. “Okay. Henry.” She tested the name, seemed to like the way it felt. “I’m making you dinner. Tomorrow night. At your place. And before you say no, this is non-negotiable. You paid for my car. I’m making you dinner. That’s how this works.”

Every instinct Henry possessed screamed at him to refuse. His apartment was his sanctuary, his carefully controlled environment. No one had been inside it in five years except him. The thought of Tanya there, in that space, seeing how he lived—it made his chest tight.

“That’s not necessary,” he managed.

“I know it’s not necessary. I want to. Unless—” She paused, suddenly uncertain. “Unless you really don’t want me to. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

And there it was: an easy out. He could say no, could maintain his boundaries, could keep her at arm’s length where it was safe. But when he opened his mouth, what came out was: “Seven o’clock.”

Tanya’s smile was incandescent. “Seven o’clock. Text me your address.”

After she left, Henry sat in his office and wondered what he’d just agreed to. Then he wondered when he’d last cleaned his apartment. Then he wondered if it mattered, since cleaning wouldn’t change what she’d see: a man living in a mausoleum, surrounded by the careful absence of everything that had mattered.

The next evening, Henry left work at 5:30—early for him—and drove home in a state of low-grade panic. He’d spent his lunch hour at the grocery store, buying wine because that’s what people did when someone cooked them dinner, wasn’t it? He’d stood in the wine aisle for twenty minutes, paralyzed by choice, before finally grabbing a bottle of red that cost forty dollars because expensive meant good, probably.

At home, he looked around his apartment with new eyes, trying to see it as Tanya would. The living room was neat, almost aggressively so. Books alphabetized. Surfaces clear. Everything in its place. But there, on the armchair by the window, was Allison’s cardigan—cream-colored cashmere, draped over the back exactly where she’d left it five years ago. He’d never moved it. Never even touched it after that first month when he’d buried his face in it every night, breathing in the fading scent of her perfume.

He should put it away. He should hide it, along with the stack of New Yorkers on the coffee table that she’d been reading, that he’d never thrown out. He should do something about the kitchen, where her favorite mug still sat in the cabinet, where the spice rack was still organized the way she’d liked it, with the labels facing out.