“Grandma, you’ve never been polite a day in your life.”
“I’m polite when it serves me.”
“That’s called manipulation.”
“It’s called experience.”
I watched them banter across the table, the ease of it, the rhythm of two people who had been doing this for years. Grandmother and granddaughter, the last two members of a family that used to be bigger, eating dinner together the way they’d done every night since Andrea came home. I was sitting in the space that used to be empty, the third chair at a two-person table, and neither of them had told me to leave.
“You’re quiet,” Andrea said to me.
“Just listening.”
“That’s new.”
“I’m a good listener.”
“Since when?”
“I’ve been listening to you for over two years. I think that qualifies.”
Andrea opened her mouth, closed it, narrowed her eyes. Across the table, the look that passed between grandmother and granddaughter said more than I could read.
“You want the pot roast recipe?” she asked me.
“I’d love it.”
“You earn it.”
“How do I earn it?”
“That’s for me to decide.”
Andrea snorted into her glass and tried to cover it with a cough. I caught it. The woman across the table caught it. Nobody acknowledged it.
After dinner I helped clear the table. Andrea washed, I dried. We stood at the sink side by side, her hands in the water, mine on the towel. She had a way of doing dishes that was exactly how she did everything, efficient, no wasted movement, a littleaggressive with the scrubbing. Her sleeves were pushed up to her elbows, her hair falling out of the clip she’d put it in for dinner, and I could see the curve of her neck when she bent over the sink and I wanted to press my mouth against it so badly my hands ached around the towel.
Her elbow bumped mine when she passed a plate. She didn’t move away. She didn’t lean in either, but the absence of retreat was everything.
“You’re not terrible at drying dishes,” she said without looking at me.
“High praise.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Too late.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. She handed me the last plate, pulled the plug on the drain, dried her hands on a towel. For a second we stood there in the kitchen, close enough that I could smell her shampoo, the vanilla one, and my chest ached with the familiarity of it.
“Goodnight, Finneas.”
“Goodnight, Andrea.”
I dried the last plate, put it away, said goodnight to both of them. Drove back to my hotel room, sat on the bed, pulled out the ultrasound photo I kept in my wallet. My wolf was quiet in my chest, present, warm. Not frantic, not pushing. Just there, patient, trusting that showing up every day was enough.
I turned off the light, lay in the dark, and thought about Andrea’s arm brushing mine at the sink.
She didn’t move away.
