"Sure," Boyd said. "That's what she is."
CHAPTER FIVE
The coffee shop was new, but the building wasn't. It had been a pharmacy for as long as Ivy could remember, the old kind with a soda counter along one wall that was still there, repurposed now into a coffee bar with the original stools and a new espresso machine that looked faintly apologetic about the renovation. Someone had left the pressed tin ceiling intact. Ivy approved of this decision.
Eva was already there when she arrived. She stood as soon as Ivy came through the door, arms opening wide in a welcome that felt as warm as it looked. Ivy took her in—the familiar golden-brown glow of her skin, her jet-black hair pulled back in a way that showed off the softness of her face, the fullness of her figure. Eva had always been curvy, but now there was something richer to it, a settled ease in her body that spoke of being loved well, of a life that fit her. Marriage had agreed with her in all the best ways.
"Sit," Eva said. "I already ordered you something. I guessed oat milk. Was that right?"
"That was right."
She settled back into her chair with the ease of a woman comfortable in her own life. She looked good. Better than Ivy remembered. More settled. More herself. "So. You're back."
"I'm back."
"In the town you spent approximately every waking hour trying to leave."
"I preferexploring options."
"You told me at graduation that you'd come back when you were someone." Eva's smile had no edge to it. "So, who are you?"
Ivy wrapped her hands around the mug that appeared in front of her. "I think I was confusing somewhereand someone. I'm still working on it. That's what the summer's for."
Eva looked at her for a moment, as though she was deciding how much to say and then deciding to say more of it. "You look tired. Not bad tired. Just — like you've been going fast for a long time."
"Chicago is fast."
"I know. Fran and I drove up twice when he had his follow-up appointments at Northwestern, and both times I came home feeling like I'd been wrung out."
Ivy had known the broad shape of Eva's husband's heart condition. Fran DeMonti had come back from an overseas tour with shrapnel in his heart. He hadn't even wanted to try to love Eva for fear that it might literally break his heart every time it skipped a beat for her. Eva's texts during the worst of it had been brief and factual in the way of someone conserving energy for the thing itself, and Ivy had sent back what felt like inadequate responses from hotel rooms in cities she was passing through.
"How is he now?"
"Good. Really good. He has hard days still, but the ranch — it helped. The whole community of it. They've built something for which I still don't have language. You drive through the gate and something in your shoulders just…" She made a small, releasinggesture. "Fran says it's because everyone there already knows the hardest thing about themselves and each other, and they all came through it."
Ivy thought about that. "That sounds like a real found family."
"It is." Eva turned her mug on its saucer. "Your neighbor does a lot out there."
"Neighbor?" Ivy didn't think the place next door to her was leased.
"The food program — the truck, the cooking workshops. Finn was at the ranch a couple of years ago. Now I can't make a salsa with a store-bought tomato. It has to be one of his."
Ivy looked up. "Finn? He was a soldier?"
"Mm. Fran says he doesn't talk about the service much. Prefers to talk to the vegetables."
The coffee was good. The tin ceiling caught the morning light and scattered it around the room. Outside the window, Main Street was doing its small-town thing: the hardware store owner sweeping his porch, a woman walking a dog that was tugging at the leash to hurry it up.
"It's different here now," Eva said.
"I grew up here."
"It's not the same place, and I think you know it. We didn't have a lot of support as kids. Carlos and Rosie are thriving on the ranch and in school. Carlos made the soccer team."
Ivy was glad to hear that her cousins had adjusted. She knew Eva had had a hard time raising her younger siblings in the rougher part of town. When Ivy had driven through their old neighborhood, it had looked different. The streets were clean. There was a mural on the brick walls instead of dripping graffiti.
She looked out the window. A different mural was visible on the feed store from this angle: the wheat field, the sunflowers, the market scene with its warm ochres.
