"He also called me stubborn."
"He said stubborn and bold and smart in the same breath. I think that was the point he was making." Mia dropped the basil into the bowl and dusted her hands together. "Just seems like you always say the worst of him and he is out here saying the best of you. I noticed. That is all."
Elizabeth said nothing. Anything she could say would sound like a defence, and none of it would be true.
The pasta water finally began to boil, which gave her something to do with her hands. She picked up the box of spaghetti and broke it in half over the pot and watched it slide into the water. She did not say anything for long enough that Mia moved on, went to the fridge, pulled out the parmesan, and began grating it without being asked.
"How do you like your sauce?" Elizabeth asked eventually, breaking the silence "More garlic or less?"
"More," Mia said. "Always more."
"Charlotte was the same."
Mia smiled. A small but real smile.
"I know," she said. "She used to say garlic was the only seasoning that had never let her down."
Elizabeth laughed. Short and genuine.
"That sounds exactly like her."
"It really does."
SEVEN
DARCY HAD BEENjogging for forty minutes, the same route through Brooklyn Heights he had run every morning since moving in, and he came back through the front door still breathing hard to find Elizabeth sitting on the living room sofa with her coat already on, her bag in her lap, and the particular posture of someone who had been waiting and had decided not to pretend otherwise.
He stopped in the doorway.
She looked up. "Good morning. I have been waiting for you."
He pulled out one earbud. "Is something wrong?"
"Nothing is wrong. I need you to take Mia to school today."
Darcy looked at her, his eyes widening in disbelief. Then at her coat. Then back at her.
"It is your turn on the schedule," he said.
"I know."
"We agreed on the schedule."
"I know that too. However, I need you to take her today."
He pulled out the second earbud and wound the cord around his hand slowly. "Where are you going?"
"Somewhere urgent."
"You are a freelance writer," he said. "You work from home. Where could be so urgent that you cannot do a thirty-minute school run?"
Elizabeth's chin lifted slightly. "First of all, you know I hate driving, but yet, I have been driving Mia to school. So, saying that I don’t want to make a thirty-minute school run as an argument does not work. Secondly, where I am going is none of your business."
"It is a thirty minute —"
"And have I not covered for you three times since we started this arrangement?" She did not raise her voice. She did not need to. "Three times, Darcy. You have a habit of disappearing on work trips at short notice and I have managed every single time without making it a discussion. I am asking you for one morning."
He said nothing. She was right and they both knew it and the knowing sat between them in the particular way of things that were true and inconvenient simultaneously.
