A silence settled between them. At first comfortable and warm. But then slightly awkward.

She picked up the whiskey and finally took a sip before asking Victor out loud, “Is it okay if I don’t use sign language this time? The truth is, I’m only so-so at it. And I want to make sure I’m fully understood.”

Victor disagreed with her assessment of her signing skills. Like him, she took great care to ensure that her signs were crisp and precise.

But he held back his thoughts on the matter. He was more curious about what she’d truly come here to talk about than eager to compliment her.

She took another sip of whiskey. Then a deep breath before saying, “I have been informally engaged to you since I was in secondary school. I never even bothered with boyfriends. I told Baba, ‘What’s the point? You’ve already picked my husband.’ I wonder, though, if perhaps it hasn’t been the same for you.”

Victor stilled, his chest chilling over with the feeling of having been caught doing something he shouldn’t. “What do you mean?”

“Is there someone that you must explain our engagement to?” she asked. “Someone that you love?”

“No,” he signed immediately. Then he refused to consider if that answer was a lie or not.

If it wasn’t true, it should be. And that was all that mattered, especially for this particular conversation.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Nora answered to his surprise. Her inquisitive expression deflated. “I was hoping we might come to an understanding. You see, there is someone I must explain this arrangement to…someone else that I love.

Victor continued to keep his expression impassive, but it became a little harder as he raised his hands to point out, “You said that you never bothered with boyfriends.”

She lowered her eyes in that demure way that he’d so appreciated at their first meeting. “Yes, that’s what I said. And that’s what I told my father. It is true I’ve never had a real boyfriend. But it is also true that you are not the only reason I didn’t bother with them. You see, I didn’t want a boyfriend. I preferred girlfriends.”

Victor stared at her. All the pennies dropping. He could almost hear Phantom’s yelling triumphantly, See! Told you she was too good to be true.

“Does your father know?” he asked her, his signs slow and deliberate as his brain worked to catch up.

Bitterness twisted across her face. “Yes, he knows. We have had many tearful fights about it. But he doesn’t care. There is a path he has set out for me. And he wants me to walk it. He does not believe I have a choice in the matter.”