Alfred didn't, either, which was the whole problem. He'd thought his letter wouldn't have come entirely out of left field — that the two of them were, if not entirely on the same page, at least in the same chapter of the same book. When she hadn't responded, though, he hadn't known what to think. Had he offended her? Had she interpreted his request for some next step, whatever it might be, as something specific, which she had been unwilling to entertain? Or had she just not known what to say and given up on trying?

"I don't know," he said, rather miserably. "I just — I guess it all went off the rails a year ago, didn't it?" he reflected, thinking back to the disastrous Passover dinner that he had unintentionally interrupted. "And it seems like there isn't any way to get it back."

Maybe there wasn't really a possibility for them to turn this relationship into something respectable and proper and accepted at any point. They'd hardly even gotten started, after all, before they'd accidentally wound up in bed together, which was not the way things were supposed to go. Nonetheless, his introduction to her father (and the rest of her family) certainly hadn't helped matters.

"I just don't know where we go from here," he continued. "Your father isn't going to change his mind about me any time soon — and you won't run away with me," he said — without any sort of judgement in his tone; this was, as far as he was concerned, an established fact in light of recent events.