The Speech Draft

Corvo closed its kitchen at half past ten most nights, but Hattie had taken to arriving after that, once the last covers went out, and setting herself up at the small round table by the pass with a legal pad and the particular fierce concentration she brought to nothing else Luca had ever watched her do.

“You don’t have to work here,” he told her, more than once. “You have a desk. Rae has a desk. You have an entire agency full of desks.”

“The agency’s desks don’t have you two tables away testing sauces I can smell from across the room,” she said, not looking up. “It helps. Don’t ask me to explain how, I’ve tried and it sounds insane out loud.”

He didn’t ask her to explain it, because he understood it well enough and didn’t want to be the one to name it: that she wrote better…