“I know.”
“I wanted to.”
“I know that too.”
She looked at him. Michael Torres. Pressed shirts and stemless wineglasses and Rosa’s molcajete on the prep counter and a painting of warm windows behind the register. The man who showed up with an easel and salsa and numbers and never once told her what to do with any of it. Who believed in her before she did and said so the way he said everything—once, quietly, meaning it.
“The wedding is Saturday,” she said.
“I’m aware.”
“Will you come? Not as—not for the numbers. Not as a consultant.” She turned the water glass again. “As mine.”
The pen came out. Went back. His hand settled on the counter beside hers. Not touching. Close.
“Yes,” he said.
That was all. One word. No exclamation. No elaboration. Yes, the way Michael said everything that mattered—clean, certain, final.
Anna looked at his hand on the counter beside hers. She moved hers an inch. Their fingers touched. The smallest point of contact. The biggest thing that had happened in this kitchen since Rosa’s salsa.
They sat like that for a while. The grill cooled. The ocean breathed. The patio waited for Saturday.
Anna locked up and walked home in the November dark. Her phone buzzed halfway there with a message from Stella.
Bea tried on her dress for Saturday. She asked if Michael was coming.
Anna stopped on the sidewalk. She typed back carefully.
Asked how? Like she was worried, or like she wanted to know?
Long pause. Three dots.
Like she wanted to know. I said yes. She said it's not terrible. That's different from fine.
Anna stood on the sidewalk with her phone and the November night around her—cool, salt-edged, the ocean audible but not visible.It's not terrible. That's different from fine.Bea's words. Bea's distinction. Not pretending everything was great. Not saying it was bad. Drawing a line between the two and standing on the right side of it.
A step. A small one. But it was movement.
She walked home. The house was warm. Bea's light was on upstairs—homework, probably, or her phone, or both. The kitchen smelled like the coffee Bea had made that morning, still lingering.
Anna set her bag down and stood in the hallway and looked at Bea’s paintings on the wall. The watercolor from Florence. The beach at sunset. A newer one—the Shack from the boardwalk, done in acrylics, the windows lit from inside.
She’d never noticed that one before. The windows. Lit from inside. Just like Michael’s painting behind the register.
Saturday. The wedding. Michael beside her. Bea across the patio, being not-terrible about it.
Anna turned off the hall light and went upstairs. She stopped at Bea’s door.
“Goodnight, Bea.”
A pause.
“Goodnight, Mom.”
Two words. Normal. The most normal two words in the world. And tonight, after everything—after the wineglasses and the focaccia and the fingers touching on the counter and Stella saying “not terrible”—they were music to her ears.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
