Well, that wasn't the truth. At least, it couldn't have been the whole truth. If the letter had only said goodbye, she would have given it to him. So there was something there she wasn't saying, and Alfred didn't think he ought to ask, only — she had been the one to bring it up in the first place, so there had to be a reason she'd done that. She wanted to talk about it, right? At least on some level. Maybe she was going through the same internal back-and-forth he was, torn between what he wanted to say and what he thought he had the right to say, after so long holding each other at arm's length. Maybe she was weighing what someone else would think of this, too, like he kept thinking of what Zelda would say. Did they both have someone's voice in the back of their heads?

He pushed his plate towards the far edge of the bar, slowly and deliberately. He didn't think he'd eat anything else tonight. Once he'd accomplished that he looked at her for a long moment, then said as though he were testing the air for something: "Jo."

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