Lindsey reached across the table and put her hand on his wrist. “Stella is the least wide-open person I have ever met. She’ll be fine.”
“You keep saying that about things.”
“Because they keep being fine. And because your daughter is tougher than you think.” She squeezed his wrist and let go. “Make the call. Give Sam the information. And then let Stella be Stella.”
He looked at her across the table—this woman who had walked into his life five months ago with an almond croissant and a lanyard and had somehow become the person he drove to when his hands were empty.
Tyler reached for his glass. “You set a pretty high bar,” he said. “For a weeknight.”
“You have no idea how low my bar is,” she said. “You’ve seen my apartment.”
“I like your apartment.”
“You like that I feed you.”
“I like a lot of things.” He took a drink and went back to his plate. “The chicken is incredible, by the way.”
Lindsey tucked a foot under herself. “You said that about my beef stew.”
“I meant it about the beef stew too. I mean it about this. You’re going to have to accept that I think you’re a good cook.”
“I’ll work on it.” She smiled at him, and the room felt smaller in a way he didn’t mind, and she went back to her plate.
They were most of the way through when Lindsey said, “I saw Stella at school today.”
“How was that?”
“She ran into me coming out of the darkroom. Literally. She was blinking against the hall lights and walked straight into me.”
“That’s Stella.”
“She told me about the Sydney trip. Oliver and the toaster. The twins.” Lindsey tore a piece of bread in half. “She made pavlova with Fiona.”
“She didn’t tell me about the pavlova.”
“She doesn’t tell you everything.” Lindsey set what was left of the bread on her plate. “And she brought back a shell—one her nana picked up on Bondi Beach the day she found out Fiona was pregnant with Stella. She kept it for sixteen years. Fiona sent it home with Stella after Christmas.”
Tyler’s hand stopped on the stem of his glass.
“Say that again.”
“Her nana kept the shell for sixteen years.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. Lindsey let the silence sit.
“I’ll talk to Anna and Meg tomorrow. And I’ll call,” he said.
“Good.”
They finished eating and neither of them said anything else about it, but his hand stayed near hers on the table, and neither of them moved.
After dinner she washed and he dried. She handed him plates and he put them in the rack, the warm water running and the clink of dishes filling the small kitchen, and their arms touched and neither of them mentioned it.
She handed him the last plate.
“Your ears are red,” she said.
He laughed. “Apparently they do that. At totally random times. And it’s all your fault.”
