Rebecca dried her hands on a towel and went to see if she was needed.
Benjamin was nothing like Mr. Caleb. Where Mr. Caleb was contained, Benjamin overflowed. He was a big man with broad shoulders and a wide smile, the kind of laugh that came from the belly and had no interest in being quiet. He was wearing a bright open-collared shirt and carrying a leather travel bag, which he dropped in the middle of the hallway without a second thought. He had the easy, comfortable energy of someone who had spent many years moving between countries and had stopped being surprised by anything.
He and Mr. Caleb were standing in the hallway when Rebecca came around the corner from the kitchen, a small tray in her hands.
“Sir,” she said, looking at Mr. Caleb, “would your guest like something to drink?”
Benjamin turned, and he stopped.
Not dramatically. Not the way people stop in films with wide eyes and sharp breaths. Just a pause, brief and quiet. His smile stayed on his face, but something behind it shifted, the way a light flickers once and then steadies.
He looked at Rebecca. His eyes moved slowly across her face, the way you look at something when your brain is doing a calculation it has not told you about yet. Her eyes, her cheekbones, the shape of her jaw, the way she held herself.
Then the smile came back fully. He shook his head almost imperceptibly, as if answering a question only he had heard, and turned back to Mr. Caleb.
“Water is fine,” he said. “Thank you.”
Rebecca nodded and went back to the kitchen.
Behind her, she heard Benjamin say something quietly to Mr. Caleb. She could not make out the words. Then she heard Mr. Caleb say, “She started last week. Grace recommended her.”
Benjamin gave a short sound, half laugh, half something else she could not read at all.
Rebecca filled 2 glasses of water and carried them back out on the tray. Neither man was looking at her strangely when she returned. Benjamin was already talking about his flight, waving his hand, launching into a story about the airport. Mr. Caleb was listening with the particular expression he used when he was being patient.
Rebecca set the glasses down and left them to it.
Benjamin stayed for lunch.
Rebecca prepared it—grilled fish, rice, and a simple salad—and served it in the dining room. As she moved back and forth from the kitchen, she caught small pieces of their conversation drifting through the doorway: old names, old places, the way people talk when they are reaching back into a shared past and pulling out memories to examine.
She paid it no particular attention. It was not her conversation to listen to.
But then she heard Benjamin’s voice drop into a different register, lower and warmer, the way a voice goes when it is getting close to something real.
“Do you remember those days, Caleb? That last year of school.”
Rebecca was in the kitchen covering a dish. She was not listening. Some of it.
“Some of it,” Mr. Caleb said.
“Some of it,” Benjamin laughed. “You always say that. You remember all of it. You just don’t like to say so.” A pause. “Victoria.”
Benjamin said the name clearly, casually, the way you drop a stone into still water without expecting much.
Rebecca set down the dish cover.
She was not sure why that name made her hands go still. She told herself it was a common name. It meant nothing. She stayed where she was and did not move.
“Benjamin,” she heard Mr. Caleb say. His voice was quiet and careful. A warning, almost.
But Benjamin was already moving forward the way old friends do, the ones who earned the right long ago to say things others would not dare.
“I’m just saying,” Benjamin said with a smile in his voice that Rebecca could hear even from the kitchen. “She was a good girl, Victoria. She deserved better from you, my friend. We both know that.”
He chuckled.
“Running away when she told you she was pregnant? Honestly, Caleb, I was ashamed of you.”
Silence followed, the kind that has weight to it.
“That was a long time ago,” Mr. Caleb said. His voice had gone very flat, very still.
“30 years,” Benjamin agreed. “Exactly.”
He paused, as if considering whether to say the next thing. Then he did.
“You know what’s strange? That girl out there, your new maid.” Another pause. “She looks like her. Victoria. Around the eyes, especially. I noticed it the moment she came around the corner.”
He laughed softly, as if trying to soften the edge of his own words.
“Probably just my imagination working too hard. I’ve been traveling. I’m tired. Ignore me.”
Mr. Caleb said nothing.
