“Did Claire Morrison just say there’s no right way to do something?” Harper said, smiling.
“Don’t tell anybody I said that. Also,” Claire said, “I cannot cook Oaxacan food. I burn rice. I will be the worst student Señora Morales has ever had in her kitchen.”
“That’s fine,” Nina said. “I think that’s part of the adventure.”
“Burning rice is not an adventure. It’s a fire hazard.” Harper smiled.
She looked at her two best friends, each of them wrapped in towels and shivering in a parking lot. But she could feel something changing inside of her.
She picked up her phone under the towel where nobody could see and listened to Jordan’s message. His voice was the same, warm and unhurried, the voice of a man who never rushed through anything.
“Hey, Harper, it’s me. Listen, I know it’s been a while. I just wanted to say a belated happy birthday. I know I’m really late. I hope fifty is treating you well.”
Then a pause.
There was a sound in the background, maybe a saw or a sander.
“I think about you sometimes. I hope that’s okay. Anyway, you know where to find me.”
Harper listened to it twice and then tucked her phone back under the towel. She pulled her towel tighter around her shoulders and watched the sun finish rising.
She didn’t call him back, not yet. But not yet was different from never.
CHAPTER 6
Señora Morales lived in a pale yellow house on a side street in North Charleston. She had an overgrown garden that looked like it could feed the entire neighborhood.
The front yard was a barely controlled mound of herbs, peppers, and flowering plants that Nina definitely could not name. Plants climbed to the porch railing and spilled over into clay pots.
A hand-painted sign by the mailbox read “Cocina de Morales,” in letters that were a little crooked and very confident.
The house smelled, even from the driveway, like toasted chilies and something sweet. The smell hit Nina in the chest. David’s kitchen used to smell like this.
Not often because David was just a weekend cook, a man who spent Monday through Friday eating whatever was fast and then devoted Saturday mornings to the long, patient work of his grandmother’s recipes.
Mole that took five hours, tamales that took seven, black beans that simmered all day on the back burner while he played music too loud and danced with Lucia on his hips, her little hands covered in masa, both of them laughing at nothing and at everything.
Nina sat in the car for a moment. At least it was not forty-five minutes, not even ten.
Just a moment long enough to breathe in that smell and decide how she was going to walk into this house without falling apart.
Claire knocked on the passenger window.
“You okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. I’m coming.”
Harper was already on the porch, looking at the herb garden as if she were gathering data for a spreadsheet. She picked a leaf off something and sniffed it. “This is epazote,” she said.
“And how do you know that?” Claire said.
“I researched Oaxacan cuisine last night. You know I like to be prepared for things.”
“You researched for a cooking class?”
