Perhaps a relative.
Perhaps someone celebrating a birthday.
Perhaps a former employee who had been invited for a special occasion.
Whatever the explanation, he did not consider her relevant to the conversation taking place at Table Four.
He turned back to Leonard.
"There's another point we need to settle tonight. The transition team."
Leonard sighed.
"We haven't even reached the final agreement."
"Which is why we need to settle it now."
"Your proposed team includes people who have never operated a restaurant."
"They understand operations."
"They understand spreadsheets."
"Spreadsheets are useful."
"Not when you're trying to decide whether a seventy-year-old kitchen porter should lose his job."
Richard placed his fork down.
"Leonard, we're discussing a business."
"Yes. A business that employs nearly six hundred people."
"And a business that has to survive."
"It has survived for decades."
"That doesn't mean it will survive another decade without changes."
Leonard looked at him.
"Sometimes the reason a business survives is that it remembers what it was built to do."
Richard did not answer immediately.
He had heard versions of that argument many times. It was always presented as wisdom. Usually, he thought, it was fear wearing the clothes of tradition.
A waiter approached the table to refill the water glasses.
Richard glanced toward the dining room again.
Eleanor had placed the envelope back inside her handbag.
She was looking at the restaurant's old photographs.
They hung along the wall near Table Twelve, framed in dark wood. Most guests barely noticed them. They showed the building when it had first opened, the original dining room, the first kitchen brigade, and several groups of staff standing outside beneath an awning that had long since been replaced.
Eleanor was studying one photograph in particular.
It showed a young woman in a white blouse, standing beside a man in a dark apron.
The woman was smiling.
The man had one hand resting on the back of a chair.
The photograph was faded, but the faces remained recognizable.
Eleanor looked at it for a long time.
Then she lowered her eyes.
Richard followed her gaze and shrugged.
"Old history," he murmured.
Leonard heard him.
"History is usually old."
Richard smiled.
"That's why people call it history."
Eleanor was waiting for someone.
She had arrived twenty minutes early because she had learned, over many years, that arriving early allowed a person to notice things that became invisible once a room grew busy.
She had not come to the Grand Aurelia simply to eat.
She had come to observe.
The reservation had been made under her full name. There was no reason to conceal it. The staff had been informed that she would arrive, but no one had been told to make an announcement.
She had specifically requested that they treat her as an ordinary guest.
That request had not been easy for the general manager to accept.
He had asked twice whether she wanted a private room.
She had declined twice.
He had offered to send the executive chef to greet her.
She had declined that as well.
She had asked for Table Twelve.
And Table Twelve was where she had been seated.
The table had once been closer to the entrance. It had been moved during a renovation, but the view of the window remained nearly the same.
Eleanor remembered sitting there with her husband, Thomas, on the first evening the restaurant had opened.
The room had been smaller then.
The chandelier had been a fraction of its current size, and the chairs had been borrowed from a hotel that had closed two streets away. The kitchen had contained fewer ovens, the wine cellar had been half empty, and the dining room had smelled of fresh paint beneath the stronger scents of butter and roasted meat.
Thomas had been thirty-nine.
Eleanor had been thirty-four.
They had been terrified.
They had spent nearly every dollar they owned to open the restaurant. Their bank had refused to extend the final loan. Their landlord had demanded additional guarantees. The contractor had threatened to walk away unless the remaining payment arrived by Friday.
Thomas had considered giving up.
Eleanor had refused.
She had sold the small house her parents left her and used the money to finish the kitchen.
Thomas had told her that he would spend the rest of his life making it worthwhile.
He had kept that promise.
For thirty-two years, they had worked side by side.
Thomas handled the kitchen and the dining room. Eleanor managed the books, the suppliers, the staff, and the countless problems that never appeared on a menu.
They had built the Grand Aurelia one difficult year at a time.
The restaurant had grown.
Then it had become famous.
Then investors had arrived.
Thomas had died eleven years ago, but Eleanor had remained connected to the business through the family trust that held the founding shares.
She no longer came to the restaurant every week.
She no longer attended every board meeting.