I want to ask if she’s sleeping well. I want to ask how she’s doing since Sabina passed. I want to ask how her mother is taking all of this.
I don’t ask anything.
I reach into my jacket and slide a card onto the prep table. It has a number on it nobody gets unless they work for me. I tap it once.
“This is to be used when needed,” I say. “It goes to me.”
She looks down, then up. “Okay.”
“Don’t use it for produce lists,” I add.
“I won’t,” she says. “Unless my langoustines are late.”
I huff a laugh. “They won’t be.”
She takes the card, doesn’t put it in her wallet, doesn’t put it in her phone. She tucks it into the inside pocket of her jacket near her heart. It does something to me, which is a ridiculous reaction to something so small.
“Anything else I should know?” she asks.
“If there is, I’ll let you know,” I say and gather our empty cups.
I wash them, set them upside down on the rack. She watches me do it with some surprise. I don’t comment. We both pretend that was nothing.
The sun starts to show at the top of the front windows—thin blue giving up to gray. The room wakes in inches. Street noise, a truck two blocks over, a door slam. I hear all of it and none of it.
“Driver at 10:00,” I repeat. “Be ready.”
“I will be.”
At the back door I pause. “One more thing.”
She turns. “Yes?”
“Relax. It’s a family dinner.”
“Like any other,” she mumbles.
“It is,” I say. I reach for the handle, then add, “Block everything else out but the food.”
“I know how,” she says.
“I figured.”
We stand there a beat too long. Close enough to feel the cool air curling in around the door, close enough that I can smell coffee on her breath and the soap on her skin.
For a wild moment, I want to press her back against the door and plunder that mouth, run my hands over shapely hips, between her legs. See if she feels what I’m feeling.
I pull open the door and step into the alley. Cold air clears my head. The door thunks shut behind me. I check the latch and pocket my hands so I don’t go back in.
On the walk to the car, I text:Langoustines, 1600. The answer comes fast:Confirmed.
Through the front glass, the room is still mostly dark. I catch a glimpse of her crossing to the office, head down, already building a menu in her head.
Chapter Eleven
Bianca
The car crawls the last stretch of driveway, if one could even call the long, winding path a driveway.
