Lily got the cork out without spraying anything, gave it a satisfied look, and poured. "To grandmas with long memories."
"To grandmas." Sienna raised her empty hand because Lily had not handed her a glass yet. "Wine would help the toast."
"Patience is a virtue."
"Says the woman who married Alek."
"Hush."
A pot lid clattered across the hall. Then Jade's voice, loud and a little wounded already.
"Are you three doing toasts without me? I'm over here ladling and you're clinking glasses? In whose house?"
"In Lily's house," Sienna called back.
"Wrong answer. In mine, spiritually. Get in here, all of you. Now. I've been working on this for an hour and a half, and somebody is going to put a spoon in their mouth and tell me I'm a genius."
Lily looked at me with the bright eyes she got when she was about to be entertained. "After you."
I walked across the hall.
I made it through the doorway, and then my body did something I didn't understand.
The smell hit me wrong. Not in the nose. Lower. A wave came up from my stomach so fast I had to put my hand on the doorframe and pretend I was just pausing to admire the room. The aromatics that had smelled good from the sittingroom, toasted chiles, cumin, something dark and chocolate-deep, turned in my head into something I needed to be away from. I swallowed against it and pushed through.
Jade was at the stove in her apron, hair up, wooden spoon raised like a scepter. She looked triumphant.
"Chloe. Come. Taste."
"I'm coming."
"You're walking like a woman approaching a firing squad."
"Sorry. Hungry."
"Hungry is the correct attitude in this kitchen."
She held up the spoon. There was a glossy dark sauce on it, flecked with something red, and on a normal day I would have been all over it. I leaned in. I took the bite.
My face did a thing. I felt it happen and couldn't stop it.
"I don't like it." It came out before I could soften it. "It smells so bad. What did you put in there?"
Jade's hand went to her chest. Wooden spoon and all. "Ouch. I've never heard a knife sharper than that in my life. Sienna. Get over here. Give me a second opinion before this woman ruins my self-image."
Sienna padded in barefoot. Took the spoon, took a small dignified taste, chewed, swallowed, set the spoon down with the gravity of a judge.
"This is good," she said. "There's no foul smell. Whatever Chloe is on, it isn't the dish."
I felt my face go hot. My hand had drifted to my stomach without me telling it to. "Really? I'm so sorry. Let me try again."
"You don't have to."
"I want to."
I took another bite to make up for being rude. The smell hit me doubled this time, and before I had the spoon back down, my stomach said no, very clearly, and very fast, and I turned to the sink in one motion and was sick.
Silence behind me. The kind of silence where three women are very pointedly not looking at each other, because if they look at each other they'll confirm something.
