“Howard.”
“What?”
“Did you invite me here to thank me or set me up with your granddaughter?”
“Both can be true.”
“Grandpa!”
Tessa was standing behind us.
Howard didn’t even look embarrassed.
“I am seventy-six. I don’t have time for subtlety.”
June shouted from the dining room, “And he’s terrible at it anyway!”
Tessa covered her face.
I laughed harder than I had in months.
Nothing happened that night.
That matters.
We didn’t fall immediately in love because an old couple had engineered a dinner.
Tessa and I exchanged numbers because she offered to send me the television video.
A few days later, she texted asking whether Lila had recovered from being “TV famous.”
I answered.
Then she answered.
A week later, we were still talking.
Tessa worked at a community arts center and had a habit of sending me photographs of the bizarre things children made in her Saturday classes.
I sent her pictures of Lila’s lunches when I accidentally cut sandwiches into shapes that looked nothing like what I’d intended.
Eventually, we got coffee.
Then dinner.
For months, I was careful.
The last serious relationship in my life had ended with someone walking out on my daughter.
I wasn’t willing to bring another person into Lila’s world casually.
Tessa seemed to understand before I even explained.
She never tried to become Lila’s mother.
She simply showed up.
She came to a school performance when I mentioned it.
She remembered that Lila hated raisins.
When Lila lost her first tooth after Tessa and I started dating, Tessa helped me write a note from the Tooth Fairy because apparently my handwriting was “too obviously Dad.”
Little things.
Reliable things.
The kind I had stopped expecting from people.
Howard and June pretended they had nothing to do with any of it.
They were terrible liars.
Two years after that snowy Thanksgiving, I took Lila back to their house.
Everyone was in the dining room when Lila suddenly yelled, “Show them!”
I looked at Tessa.
She was laughing and already crying because she knew exactly what was coming.
I took the small ring box from my pocket.
Howard slapped both hands on the table.
