Dinner lingered far longer than either of them had intended. It wasn't that the service was particularly slow or that they had opted for an endless succession of courses; rather, it was because once the heavy, tectonic shifts of the week had been discussed and settled, the conversation began to drift into the smaller, easier directions that made time feel elastic.
They found themselves drifting back to graduation, laughing at the sheer unreality of waking up without the phantom weight of unfinished lectures pressing down on them. Catharine described, with vivid and hilarious detail, a senior lecturer who had nearly executed a perfect face-plant over a stage cord during the ceremony, only to spend the next ten minutes attempting to recover his academic dignity with a series of stern, meaningful nods. Jake countered with the story of Aliya's near-shouting match with a slow-moving usher, while their mother stood nearby, radiating a masterful "I have no idea where she gets this" energy.
