She didn't have his number — that was the thing she kept circling back to, later, when she was trying to reconstruct exactly how this had become her life. She hadn't given him hers. But it arrived at 11:14 on a Tuesday morning, no introduction, no preamble, the way a conversation continues rather than begins:
The Northern Renaissance lecture at the Whitmore Gallery. Thursday evening. Thought of you.
Emma stared at it for a long moment. Then she put her phone face-down on her desk and looked at her laptop screen and didn't read a single word of the article open in front of her.
She picked the phone back up.
*How did you get this number.*
His response came in under a minute.
*Your father's emergency contact form. I do own the company.*
She could hear his voice in it — that low, unhurr
