But now there was Jack. Smart, handsome, caring Jack. That first coffee had turned into lunch, and they’d started to meet regularly. Their friendship had deepened, warmer feelings creeping up on them stealthily and unannounced. She couldn’t quite remember when she’d first noticed the shift. Was it that day at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden when he’d taken her hand in his? Or their first kiss by the fountain in Central Park?

Flora had never had a relationship that she hadn’t had to work hard at, not with her aunt and not with boyfriends, so it was a revelation to discover that she could be herself with him. Not her whole self of course. There was still plenty he didn’t know about her, feelings she kept tightly packed away in storage inaccessible to all but her. No doubt there was also plenty she didn’t know about him but what she knew, she liked.

He seemed to know something about almost everything, so instead of typing her questions into a search engine she just asked Jack. They visited the Frick Collection and she didn’t bother with an audio guide because she had Jack telling her a little about everything in a way that brought the art to life. Her mother had possessed the same gift and that small connection seemed to pull them closer together like tiny invisible threads. They headed to the Bronx and visited the New York Botanical Garden, a place Flora had often visited with her mother. Here in this lush oasis, among the buds and blooms, she knew more than he did and he questioned her constantly. What was that flower? What climate did that particular tree like? What would she plant in a garden if she had one? He was the first man she’d dated to show an interest in who she was and what she enjoyed. And the interest was mutual. So far, she hadn’t had to take a crash course in any of his interests in order to keep the relationship alive. Jack worked in a senior tech role for a company that specialized in artificial intelligence, and his few attempts to describe what he did had made her eyes cross. Fortunately he didn’t seem to need to talk about his work when they were together and gradually she’d stopped her internet searches on “tech for beginners.”

It wasn’t as if they were short of conversation topics. The only subject off-limits for him was his wife. He talked about her in relation to the children, and how they were coping, but didn’t talk about his own emotions. She’d been sensitive, approaching the topic with the care of someone peeling the bandage from an open wound, but he’d shut her down gently and eventually she’d stopped asking. She respected the fact that there were things he didn’t want to talk about. She was the same.