Alfred didn't know how to answer. Part of him wanted to strip away the pretense, dispense with all the artificial space they'd put between themselves and say straight out that he missed her and he wanted to see her again, the same way they had before. He didn't know what Zelda would have thought of that, though; the last time they'd really talked about Jo in any depth had been the day of the blizzard, when she'd said I need it to be done. A lot had changed since the blizzard, but he didn't know if Zelda's feelings on the matter had or not. He'd meant to talk to her about Jo this year; he'd wanted to ask why Zelda hadn't mentioned Jo's daughter, when he'd immediately come clean about having ran into her again. But he hadn't ever asked Zelda about it. He'd quibbled with himself about the timing: not while she was pregnant and they were supposed to just be happy; not right after the baby was born; not right after she'd quit; not right before he left. The end result was that they'd never talked about Jo, not really, since she'd been back in the country, and he didn't know what Zelda would think of him sitting beside her at a bar now.

Zelda trusted him, he thought. She trusted him because he was trustworthy; even if he did have an honest conversation with Jo, it wasn't as though anything was going to happen. And, also — Zelda wasn't ever going to know what happened in a pub in Cape Town, anyway.

"Do you think things happen for a reason?" he asked, ignoring her questions.

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