Chapter 7: Eleanor's New Geography

The invitation arrived as a card, which was how he knew it was serious.

Not a text from Eleanor's assistant, not a call routed through the protocol office — a card, cream stock, hand-addressed in his mother's specific and unhurried cursive, slid under the door of his Georgetown apartment sometime between Monday night and Tuesday morning. He found it when he came back from a run he'd taken not for exercise but because walking in circles in four rooms was starting to show. The card said: *Dinner. Wednesday. Seven. Please come.* No elaboration. His mother had never used elaboration; she considered it a form of weakness.

He turned the card over. Nothing on the back. He held it by its edges, briefly, before he understood he was checking for something and that the something was ridiculous, and he set it on the counter and made coffee.