I followed her into the kitchen and watched her slam the basket onto the counter with a wince.
“Do you need help?”
“I’ve got it.” She turned on the water in the sink and left the faucet running as she rummaged through one of the lower cupboards next to the stove. “Where is everything?” she exclaimed, tossing her hands in the air. “I was going to make pear-and-apple pie, but I need to wash the fruit.”
I went to the colander’s new location in a cupboard directly beside the sink, which I had to admit made more sense, and unstacked a few bowls out of it to hand it to Aunt Josette.
“Funny how Father doesn’t call me.” I sounded like a petulant child, and felt like one, but pretended neither was true.
“If you answer your phone for him like you do me, then no wonder!” Aunt Josette wasn’t judging. Just the opposite, she was chuckling.
“I answer international calls,” I said.
She sniggered. “I see. I need to move across the world to be answered.”
“And marry a horse breeder. And have three other children, none of whom I know, even though they’re related to me.”
She laughed outright and tugged me by my wrist over to the sink to slap a paring knife in my hand. “Get a bowl. Slice pears. Thin.”
“Yes,” I said with a sigh, but really, I loved her too much to argue. If she wanted thin-sliced pears, she’d be able to read the Bible through them.
We’d cut half the pears by the time Max came into the kitchen dressed cuter than a teddy bear in one of my black sweaters, which was huge on him and he’d taken to wearing when we had no place to go. Aunt Josette tossed her knife into the sink. I jumped back at her blatant disregard for safety or cutlery, and Max froze as she hobbled toward him, her long, pink skirt flapping behind her. She grabbed him and gave him a squeeze around the middle.
“You must be why I’ve been ignored. Welcome, welcome to the Dubois family. Let me see.” She stepped back and clasped Max’s face between her weathered hands, tilting his head this way and that while she hummed. “Yes, he’s a good one. You keep him, Jean-Paul. Treat him well.” She patted Max’s cheek, and I could see his struggle. She was touching his face. I’d completely forgive him if he shoved her off, but he only forced a pained smile I knew was the equivalent of his brain mining a gem and passing it over.Good boy.
“That’s Aunt Josette,” I said with a laugh. “She has the Dubois charm.”
“But do you have clean hands?” he asked with a half-serious chuckle.
“Of course!” She came back over to the sink, and I handed off my knife to Max when he got too close. I popped a kiss on his lips, and he gave me a pleading pout as I winked.
“I’m off to shower. Do whatever Aunt Josette says.”
“Yes,” he replied quietly, and I could hear the “yes, Daddy” there.
“Good. Make me proud. You’re standing in the presence of greatness.” I gave his back a pat, and Aunt Josette laughed, tugging him closer to the sink the same way she had me. I watched them from the doorway, the way Max leaned down to nod at whatever Aunt Josette said to him. She slipped into French, which I never noticed much. I wasn’t fluent but understood enough to get the gist of things whenever she did that. Max had to ask her to repeat herself, and that had Aunt Josette laughing. He glanced over his shoulder at me and smiled, and the warmth from earlier, when he’d been deep in my body, shivered through me again. Aunt Josette was the closest thing I had to regular family and she appeared to like him. Quietly, I left them and went upstairs to get ready for the day.
The afternoon disappeared in a blur of Aunt Josette’s cooking, which we both helped her with, and by late afternoon we were sitting down to a meal of lamb, tartiflette, greens, pear-and-apple pie, a hunk of bread larger than my head, and a nice white wine.
She smiled at Max and clinked her glass against his, causing him to grab the base of it where it rested on the kitchen table. “You haven’t told me yet. How did you meet my handsome nephew?”
“Work,” he said with a smile.
“Good, good. You like this fine house as much as he does? I’m not going to live forever. Someone needs to help him.” She leaned forward and tapped his hand with a bony finger.
“Aunty,” I snapped. My eyes teared up and I cleared my throat.
“What? It’s true.”
Max laughed. “I’ll help him. I don’t mind.”
“That’s good.”
I stared at him, tickles zinging through my chest, and zoned out imagining what a future with him might be like as he nodded and laughed and took a polite sip of his wine.
“Wait, there’s a library?” he asked in outrage.
I blinked and wished I’d been paying attention to the conversation.
