I went back to the sauce. “Does she want New Orleans, or does she want you?”
He exhaled softly through his nose. “Both, maybe. She’s curious about the city. The food and the music. The fact that everyone I know appears to have an opinion about where she should live already.”
“That began the moment you told Dominic.”
“Yes.”
The piano stopped. Applause sounded from the salon. I heard Celeste’s voice above it. My mother answered with something I couldn’t make out. My father laughed.
Then came Jules in the kitchen doorway, saxophone hanging from his hand, tie loosened, smile easy.
“You’re hiding,” he said to me.
“I’m cooking.”
He kissed the air beside my cheek, reached for the open bottle without permission, and glanced at Thiago.
“You look less pale every time I see you,” he said.
“I take that as a compliment.”
“It’s meant that way. Last time I saw you, you had hospital in your face.” Jules poured himself half a glass. “Dominic’s still talking about the Orpheum as if the whole thing was an issue of poor timing.”
Thiago gave him a dry look. “He said last week that when I tackled Micah, I was slightly ahead of the beat.”
Jules barked out a laugh. “That sounds like him.”
He looked into the pot I was tending, and said, “I would leave you men to your work, but one of you is clearly not working.”
“I opened the wine,” Thiago said.
Jules glanced at the bottle and then at me. “He’s right. Don’t be cruel just because the man relocated.”
Relocated.
Thiago had moved into a second-floor apartment in the Marigny three weeks ago. He still traveled for The Guardians when Eamon needed him elsewhere, but New Orleans was now the city he called home.
Jules headed back to the salon, the saxophone brushing lightly against his trouser leg. Another burst of conversation followed. I heard Dominic ask, “One more?”
Thiago reached for the plates.
“Not those,” I said.
He stopped with both hands suspended over the stack. “This kitchen is hostile territory.”
“This kitchen is precise.”
I chuckled as I put the spoon down. Turning, I reached for him and shared a quick kiss.
Dominic sat at the head of the table as if he’d been sitting there for a hundred years. Celeste was to his right in dark green silk and pearl studs, one wrist ringed in gold. My mother sat across from her in deep blue, compact and composed. Next to her was my father. Jules sat midway down the table with his saxophone case leaned carefully against the wall behind him and spoke to Dominic about a drummer neither of them trusted not to rush.
Thiago sat beside me.
Celeste lifted her glass once the first plates had been served. “To survival,” she said.
Dominic, with his own glass halfway to his mouth, paused and looked down the table before answering. “To continuation.”
That was better. More honest too.
