It took a little bit of negotiating, but soon the two of us had worked out our schedules for the next few months—the ironclad dates we would see each other, when my dad would come to Connecticut, when I would take the train into New York. He told me that his first priority was a do-over of my birthday dinner, and that was when I’d been able to tell him, like it was no big deal, that I knew the general manager at Josephine’s. I slid her card across to him, mentioning casually that I could get a reservation whenever we wanted, and was rewarded when my dad’s eyebrows flew up. Before I could explain, Joy yawned behind her hand, which was when we both realized that it was already ten thirty.

I had just assumed I’d get a train home from Grand Central, but my dad refused. “I don’t want you walking around Grand Central alone this late,” he’d said, already reaching for his phone. “It’s dangerous, and your mother would never forgive me.” I didn’t argue, sensing this would not be the time to tell him I’d been through an attempted mugging earlier that night. In the end, we’d reached an agreement: I wouldn’t tell my mom he’d missed my birthday dinner, and he wouldn’t tell her that I’d come into the city without permission. We shook on it, and something in my dad’s expression let me know that he secretly liked the idea of the two of us having a thing we weren’t going to tell my mother about. And a condition of these terms was that I’d take a car back to Stanwich.

He went down with me to wait for the car, and as we stepped off the elevator and into the lobby, I saw that it was snowing.

“Dad,” I said, pointing outside. I walked up to the front windows of Mayfair Towers and looked at the snow. I’d been through enough winters to know that this version of the snow—when a soft blanket was covering things, everything looking pristine, before snowplows and boots and dogs—was not going to last long. But for the moment, suddenly, it was magical. “Want to go out and see the snow?”