Meredith’s gaze shifted to Kate and her green eyes widened. “Hi, Kate. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“As have I about you,” she said. The two of them exchanged a light hug without squeezing little Atlas. “We’re so happy you’ve come down.”
Meredith sighed, looking from the baby to Jonah. “I had to step in and be an auntie,” she said, her voice unusually soft. “And keep an eye on my big brother.”
“I have many eyes on me down here,” he said, gesturing around the room.
After they all chatted some more, put Atlas down for a nap, and showed Meredith around, she made her way back to Jonah and put an arm around him.
“You okay?” she asked softly.
He studied her for a moment, noticing the slightest darkness under her eyes, which were normally bright and painfully healthy. Not that she looked unhealthy, but she did look tired.
Well, she’d just taken the architecture boards, so she probably was.
“Define ‘okay,’” Jonah replied with a shrug. “And how’s your perfect life?”
She rolled her eyes. “Woefully flawed,” she whispered.
Something in her voice touched him—she so rarely admitted a weakness.
“Then I’m glad you’re here,” he said.
“Of course I’m here. What do you need? Anything at all, I’m your girl.”
He remembered the conversation with Kate, and decided to take her advice. “I need someone to go with me to get chef’s knives, a couple of aprons, and maybe a beer in the sunshine.”
“Done and done!” She smiled, then it faded. “No beer for me.”
“No?”
“No, I…am…perfect, remember?” she quipped with a wink.
“Oh, yes, I recall that about you, Mer.”
Still, he was happy she was here. This was his sister, who knew every ugly chapter in his life and hadn’t walked away.
And he needed her now. Whether he wanted to or not.
Meredith shifted her purse to her left arm and glanced sideways at her brother, who was carrying a shopping bag from a high-end kitchen store in one hand and a matte-black box of Henckels knives in the other.
“You look like a man launching a Michelin career,” she teased as they wormed their way through the crowds of HarborWalk Village.
“Or one who will very swiftly lose a thumb in my first week in the culinary school kitchen.”
“Are you in the kitchen from Day One?” she asked. “Or is it classes and presentations?”
He snorted. “I have no idea. I’m not even sure I’m going.”
She came to a sudden halt. “Jonah!”
“I know, I know. I’m getting the, ‘You can’t give up now, kid,’ lectures left and right.” He threw her a look. “First of all, I’m not you.”
She jabbed him with her elbow. “Stop it.”
“Second, I have a baby and, yes, the free world wants to help me take care of him, but he is my responsibility, first and foremost. That changes everything.”
Taking a breath, she considered that comment and how it cut through her as if he’d used one of those expensive knives. She had a baby, too, only it was barely a poppy seed now, and no one knew about it, let alone had lined up to take care of it.
