Tyler drove to Lindsey’s on Tuesday night with nothing in the passenger seat.
He usually brought something. Wine from the place on Glenneyre. Lemons from the farm stand past the bridge. Once, a rotisserie chicken. Tonight he had left the bungalow with his jacket half-zipped and gotten two blocks before he’d realized his hands were empty and by then he was almost there, and he’d kept going.
She was on the porch when he pulled up, barefoot in the cold, holding a wooden spoon. She looked at him and tilted her head toward the door.
“Come inside. I made a chicken.”
“You made a whole chicken?”
“I had the afternoon off and I was in a chicken mood. Come on.”
The apartment smelled like garlic and lemon and something herby, and a cast iron pan was resting on her stove with a roasted chicken in it, lemon halves and onions gone to jam around the edges. Lindsey set the wooden spoon on the counter and squeezed his arm on her way past—quick, warm. She’d already read his face.
Tyler sat at her small table with mismatched chairs. The one she’d refinished last month, which he’d watched her sand down in her backyard for an entire Saturday. He ran his hand along the arm of it.
“You’re being quiet,” she said.
She sat down across from him, pulled a leg off the bird, put it on his plate and started serving the salad—not waiting, not circling, just making him a plate—and something about the ease of it made him say it.
“I have to call Sam.”
Lindsey looked up. She knew about Sam. He’d told her the broad strokes months ago—the mother who left, the postcards from wherever, the family that had stopped expecting her to show up.
“The girls are going to Sedona in two weeks,” he said. “Somebody has to call Sam with the travel details. If it were just Bea, Anna could make that call. But Stella’s going too.”
“And Sam doesn’t know about Stella.”
“Nobody ever told her. It wasn’t a thing I decided—we just don’t talk to Sam. None of us do. She sends a postcard occasionally. We read it, nobody picks up the phone.” He turned his wine glass on the table without drinking. “And now Stella’s about to walk into her house, and Sam needs to know before she opens the door and there are two girls standing there instead of one.”
Lindsey pulled the chicken toward her and started pulling meat off the breast, putting pieces on his plate. Not looking at him. Just feeding him.
“Go ahead and eat,” she said. “So, you have to call your mother, who you haven’t spoken to in years, and tell her she has a granddaughter she’s never met?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“What are you going to say?”
“Something like—Bea’s coming, and she’s bringing my daughter. Her name is Stella. She’s seventeen.” He ate a piece. “I don’t know what else there is to say.”
“Is she going to ask why you didn’t tell her?”
“Probably. And the answer is that I didn’t think about it, because I don’t think about calling her. It’s been years.”
She ate quietly, hands busy, no pacing or talking in circles.
“That’s a hard phone call,” she said. “But it’s a phone call. Not a crisis. Not a confession. Just—hello, here’s what’s happening, here’s who’s coming.”
He almost smiled. “Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it. And it should be.” He went back to his plate. “Stella asked me if Sam knew about her. And it wasn’t like I did it on purpose. Not tell Sam. I just didn’t think about it until this came up, but I didn’t want to tell Stella that.”
“What did you say?”
“I said no. And her face—” He stopped. “She didn’t say anything. She just said okay. But her face, Lindsey.”
Lindsey put her fork down and looked at him. “What are you actually afraid of?”
He didn’t answer right away. He ate. Drank his wine.
“That Sam does to Stella what she did to me,” he said. “That Stella walks into that house and Sam is wonderful for a day and a half and then just—stops seeing her. And Stella doesn’t have the calluses for it. She’ll walk in there wide open.”
