LENA

The dinner was at Aureole.

Nate had told me about it on Wednesday, the specific and particular kind of dinner that existed in Julian's professional life with regularity, the kind that was not a dinner but a negotiation conducted over food, where the food was incidental and the seating arrangement was deliberate and the conversation had the specific and careful quality of language being used to accomplish things that could not be accomplished in a boardroom.

The Hargrove acquisition dinner.

Twelve people.

I knew the names from the briefing documents Julian had left on the kitchen counter Thursday morning, not handed to me, not explained, simply left there with...