“And what is stopping you?”
“Money,” I answered immediately. “Everything needs money. Even the smallest opportunity requires money.”
“Is that what you truly believe?”
I shrugged.
“It’s what I see every day.”
She studied me for a long moment.
“You are young, Daniel. Youth is a wonderful thing, but it can also make a person impatient. Sometimes, people become so desperate to escape their circumstances that they stop asking where a particular road will lead.”
I thought she was giving me ordinary advice.
I had no idea she was about to offer me a road of my own.
Over the following weeks, we met several more times. She introduced me to expensive restaurants, took me to art exhibitions, and occasionally invited me to accompany her on short drives through the city.
I enjoyed talking to her. She was intelligent, observant, and surprisingly funny.
But I did not love her.
I was twenty-two. She was seventy. We belonged to entirely different generations, and I had never imagined marrying someone old enough to have been my grandmother.
