Mary looked him up and down. “You look less miserable than last time.”
“Thank you?”
“Still not a compliment. But you’ve got color in your face. You eating?”
“Andrea feeds me.”
“I do not feed him,” I said. “He feeds himself. He learned to cook.”
Mary’s eyebrows shot up. She looked at him, then at me, then back at him. “You cook now.”
“Pasta, mostly.”
“Is it good?”
“It’s...” I searched for the right word. “Adequate.”
“She said it was genuinely good,” Finneas said. “At dinner. She used the word genuinely.”
“I was being polite.”
“You’ve never been polite to me a day in your life.”
Mary was watching us like a tennis match, her eyes bouncing back and forth. The grin spreading across her face was unmistakable: a woman who had been right about everything from the beginning, savoring every second of it.
“Don’t,” I said to her.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face is saying plenty.”
He helped without being asked, the way he always did here. Walked the dogs, refilled the water stations, held a kitten while I caught up with Mary in the back. He was better at it than he used to be. The kitten was draped across his forearm like a furry scarf and he wasn’t flinching, which was progress from the man who once held a cat like it was a live grenade. I watched him through the doorway while Mary talked, watched him scratch behind the kitten’s ears with his thumb while he checked water bowls, and my stomach did a slow flip that had nothing to do with the pregnancy.
I was telling Mary about Whitebrook, the therapy group, the scan, when she said it. Casually, mid-sentence, like she was commenting on the weather.
“By the way, the new x-ray machine came in last week. Tell Finneas thanks again for us.”
I stopped mid-sentence. “What x-ray machine?”
Mary blinked. “The digital one. And the ultrasound.” She tilted her head. “Wait. He didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“I assumed he would have used it as ammunition by now. Man funds an entire shelter for the love of his life and doesn’t even brag about it? That’s either saint behavior or insanity.” She set her coffee down and looked at me like she was deciding how much to say. “He called me a few months ago. Said he wanted to make sure Bonalisa was taken care of regardless of what happened between you two. Paid off the lease, covered both our salaries, funded all the medical upgrades. Peter cried. I almost cried. The cats didn’t care.”
I stared at her. “He funded the entire shelter.”
“Permanently. No strings, no conditions, no naming rights. He didn’t even want us to tell you.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“He asked me not to. And honestly? The man was clearly losing his mind over you. Keeping his one secret felt like the least I could do.”
I sat there processing it while Mary watched me with that look she got when she was trying not to say something she was definitely going to say.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
