“I am over her.”
Daisy didn’t look convinced. “Sure you are.”
“Oh, girls.” Their mom came to stand between them, resting a hand on their shoulders. “It’s so nice having you both home. I was starting to miss the constant bickering.”
“You love our constant bickering,” Daisy said, sitting beside Lily. “It keeps you young. You got any plans for the weekend, Lily?”
“I don’t want to meet the mechanic.”
Daisy rolled her eyes. “That’s not why I was asking. Alex doesn’t get back from his business trip until Sunday, so do you wanna keep me company tomorrow?”
“You mean help you look after the baby? Yeah, sure.” It wasn’t like Lily had anything better to do.
The front door opened, heavy footsteps sounding on the wooden floor a moment later, and their father appeared in the kitchen doorway, his face streaked with grease. “Well if it isn’t all my favorite women in the same room.”
“Flatterer,” her mom said, fond smile on her face. Lily loved that after thirty-five years together they still looked besotted by one another.
“That’s me. Hi Daisy, Lily.” He bent to kiss their cheeks. “Have I got time to shower before dinner?”
“As long as you’re quick.”
“I always am.” He trudged toward the stairs, and Lily handed Emma over to Daisy so she could settle her in her carrier while they ate. Lily helped her mom plate their food, then sat between her mom and her sister. Her dad soon joined them, and the night flew by, Lily reveling in the familiarity of being home.
* * *
“Do you want wheat or rye bread?” Eva glanced at the bakery selection with her hands on her hips. Receiving no answer from her mother, Eva nudged the back of her mother’s chair. “Mom?”
“Hmm?”
Eva turned to look at her, finding her attention was elsewhere, fixed on something further down the aisle. “Wheat or rye? What are you looki—” Eva froze when she followed the path of her mother’s gaze.
Lily Cross stood a few feet away, looking like a deer in the headlights when her eyes met Eva’s.
Lily’s thumb was trapped by the tiny fingers of the baby strapped to her chest. At only a few weeks old, there was no way she could be Lily’s. Her niece, maybe, based on the similarities between Lily and the woman who was pushing a cart next to her, chattering away and seemingly oblivious to Lily’s sudden silence.
“Do you know that woman?” Eva’s mother said, cutting through her thoughts. “She keeps looking over here and I don’t recognize her.”
“We work together,” Eva said, her words curt, and she shoved a loaf of rye bread into the shopping basket, tired of waiting for an answer.
“You do?” Her mother looked elated, and Eva smothered a groan. “Let’s go and say hello.”
“Let’s not.” Eva grabbed the handles of her chair, keeping her in place, when her mother tried to wheel away.
“Why?”
Eva sighed, regretting the decision to take her mother to the grocery store with her. She thought it would be good for her mother to get out of the house—now Eva wished she’d left her at home. “Because I don’t want to.”
“Very well.”
Eva steered them back the way they came to avoid Lily—and to ensure her mother couldn’t involve herself in Eva’s business—but they ran into her on the next aisle, and the next, the woman damn near inescapable.
It was the first time Eva had ever seen someone from work—student or otherwise—off-campus. The reason she hadn’t chosen a school closer to home had been to avoid a situation like this, a run-in with someone while Eva was out minding her own business.
Especially Lily.
Eva couldn’t pinpoint what, exactly, it was about the other woman that grated on her nerves, but she’d been avoiding her all week. Successfully. But there Lily was, at the other end of the coffee aisle, laughing at something her sister said.
Did she live nearby? Did her sister? Was this going to become a regularity? Running into Lily at the grocery store, or at the pharmacy, or at the gym?
