Chapter 73 - The Miscommunication (1/2)

”Are you alright, Miss Claire?”

It's Dale, as always, asking her if there's anything she might need. Sometimes Claire wonders: How much does Gabriel pay Dale to take care of me? Because as things look, Dale must be excellently paid.

Dale's words yank her out of her reverie. ”Oh, sorry. I think I'm too sleepy that I'm now fading.”

Dale smiles. ”Sir Miguel has left. Was your meeting with him to your satisfaction?”

”I'm not sure,” she mutters, because truly she isn't sure. ”It's the strangest meeting.”

Dale looks at her, but decides it's not his place to pry. ”Perhaps you would like me to accompany you to your suite, Ma'am?”

”Oh, I'm alright, Dale,” she says, standing up. ”I'm fine. I think I'll walk myself to the elevator now and retire.”

”Good night, Miss Claire.”

”Good night.”

Even as Claire speaks, her mind is elsewhere. This is torture. Truly. In her heart is a mish-mash of feelings she doesn't fully understand. But what if she tries to approach this logically? What if she deconstruct all the elements of her current dilemma?

Upon entering her suite, she's surprised to find it clean and in excellent order. There's even a feast on the table. Claire makes a mental note of telling Lucille or Dale to stop putting so much food on her dining table—it's just so wasteful. Either they have a plan of making her hopelessly fat at the end of her tenure, or they're just trying to cook everything in the Residence's gigantic walk-in freezer, which had been sitting there ever since Gabriel repurposed the building into her own sole address. Claire shakes her head involuntarily, as she realizes these are the things she might miss when it's over. But then again, she had lived for a long time without anything, so it should not be a big deal to return to being nothing, a nobody.

Absent-mindedly, she picks up a piece of fruit—everything else will go to waste, she thinks, and she's almost tempted to say a silent prayer of apology to the turkey and cow and pig that had been slaughtered to be part of this standby feast—and tentatively bites into it as she recalls the evening's meeting. It was hardly a meeting but a confession, if unusual at that.