She stays later than usual on Tuesday, past the point where leaving would be the sensible thing, because something in the quality of the evening feels like it’s asking her to.

The second flush is thinning now — not gone, but visibly past its peak, a few more brown pods showing among the flowers each day, the row’s balance tipping slowly from bloom toward seed. Elias has been quieter than usual all evening, not withdrawn exactly, but present in the way people are present when they’re deciding something.

They sit at the bench as the light goes down properly for once, past gold into something closer to blue, the signal gantry turning from a shape into a silhouette into nearly nothing at all.

“Can I ask you something,” she says, “that isn’t about the model, or the notices, or any of it?”

“You can ask.”

“What were you, before all that? Not your job. You. Before you were the person who built things you regret.”

He’s quiet long enough that she thinks he might not answer at all, which she’s prepared for — she has learned, across these months, that some doors he opens slowly or not at all, and that pushing has never once worked, only waiting.

“I was married,” he says finally. “For a long time. Longer than the marriage was good, if I’m honest, though most of it was good, in its way.”

“What happened?”

“She left before the work took everything. She was the smarter one of us — she saw where it was going before I let myself see it.” He looks at his hands. “I don’t blame her. I’ve had a long time not to blame her.”

Mara waits, sensing there’s more, not reaching for it.

“There was someone else too,” he says, quieter. “Someone I don’t talk about. Someone I lost in a different way — not to leaving. To silence. My own silence, mostly.” He stops himself there, visibly, the sentence closing like a door he’d opened by accident. “I’m not ready to say more about that tonight.”

“Okay,” she says, and means it — no push, no question, just acceptance of the boundary as it stands.

“I will, eventually. I think I owe you that, given what you’ve handed me without asking anything back.” He looks at the row, gone nearly to silhouette now too. “Not tonight.”

She doesn’t answer with words. She just stays a while longer, until the last of the light is gone, which feels, between them, like answer enough.