“Who’s coming?”
“Oh, a few people. Shreriff Hank. Dr. Theo. The Garcia family. Bianca, probably. I told her she shouldn’t eat alone on a Saturday.”
There it is.
She drops the name the way you’d drop a lit match into dry kindling. Casual. Almost careless. Except Nora Bell has never been careless about a single thing in her life, and we both know it.
“Nora.”
“Six o’clock, sweetheart. Bring Chief. He can have the good scraps.”
She hangs up before I can say no. That’s her move. It has been since long before I left for the Navy. She makes the ask, provides the reason, and exits before you can build a defense. By the time you’ve thought of a good excuse, she’s already set an extra plate.
I put the phone down and lean against the counter. Chief is watching me from the doorway, head tilted, ears forward.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I tell him.
He keeps looking at me like that.
I know what this is. Nora saw something at the clinic. Maybe Bianca said something, or maybe Nora didn’t need anyone to say anything, because Nora sees things that other people miss and she’s been waiting for a reason to pull this thread for a long time. She’s been watching me close myself off for years, and she’s been patient about it. Now she’s found an opening, and she’s walking through it with a pot roast.
I should say no. Call her back and tell her I’ve got a delivery Saturday, or the truck needs work, or the leg is bad. She’d accept it. She’d be disappointed, but she’d accept it, and she’d try again next week because that’s what she does.
But telling Nora no feels like telling my mother no. And I’ve been telling my mother no for long enough.
I eat the rest of the cold stew. I don’t call her back.
* * *
The Summit House looks warm from the outside. That’s the first thing I notice when I pull into the gravel lot on Saturday, because warmth is something I register the way other people register temperature. The white Victorian with its green shutters is glowing. Every window lit. The wraparound porch strung with small lights that Nora probably put up this afternoon. I can smell the pot roast from the truck.
Chief shifts in the passenger seat, nose working.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “I know.”
I sit in the truck for three minutes, and I count them. Three minutes of sitting in the dark with the engine off, listening to laughter and conversation bleeding through the walls of the B&B, telling myself I can leave. I can put the truck in reverse and drive back up the mountain and text Nora that the leg was bad and she’ll understand.
I get out of the truck with Chief in tow.
The porch stairs are a negotiation. Two steps, a railing I grip hard enough to whiten my knuckles, and a landing that puts me face to face with Nora’s front door. Inside, I can hear Hank’s steady voice, the Garcias laughing, the clatter of plates being set on a table. Normal sounds. The sounds of people who know how to be around other people.
I open the door.
Nora finds me in three seconds. She’s across the room with a glass of something in her hand and she crosses the space witha smile that says I knew you’d come and wraps her free arm around my waist in a half-hug that I tolerate because she smells like my mother’s kitchen, cinnamon, and fighting it would cost more than allowing it.
“You came,” she says.
“You knew I would.”
“I hoped.” Her eyes are bright. Warm. Dangerously satisfied. “There’s pot roast. And pie. Go fix yourself a plate.”
I scan the room out of habit. Hank by the fireplace, beer in hand, talking to one of the Garcia sons. Dr. Theo in the corner armchair, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else, which means he’s where Nora told him to be. The Garcia family filling up the dining table with noise and warmth.
And Bianca.
She’s standing near the kitchen doorway, holding a glass of water with both hands. Red curls loose around her shoulders. Green eyes that find me and then drop to the floor. A flush climbs her neck.
She’s wearing a soft blue sweater and jeans, and she looks the way she looked at the clinic. Quiet. Contained. Trying very hard to take up as little space as possible.
