“How many cookies?”
“On the worst day, eighty-four. On the best day, three hundred and forty-two. I priced them at two dollars each, and I learned in the first week that people pay more for a brown paper bag and a handwritten label than they pay for a box. Presentation is half the meal. My grandmother told me that, and I didn’t believe her until I had two regular accounts and a notebook of standing orders by the time my mother came home.”
“From cookies to a warehouse.”
“From cookies to a food truck. From a food truck to a kitchen I rented an hour at a time on Wednesdays from a community center in Brooklyn. From the community center to my own space. The woman who ran the kitchen was Esther, and she told me on my last Wednesday there that I had been the only renter who left her kitchen cleaner than I found it, and she expected me to remember that when I had my own people. So I do.”
Gabriel had set his coffee down. He was watching her the way he used to watch her in calculus when she was working through a proof at the board. Like he was waiting to see what she did next, and like he already knew.
“What about you?” she asked.
“Less interesting.”
“I doubt that. Ronan was your roommate. Knox was your, what?”
“My TA. Sophomore year. Then my project partner junior year. Then my problem child every year after that.”
“Why finance?”
“Because it’s exactly what my father didn’t want. He assumed I’d take over the firm in his name and do what I was told. I went the opposite direction. If I was going to run something, I wanted to build it.” He paused. “Knox and Ronan wanted to bet on me, and at twenty-four I’d have walked off a roof if those two had told me to.”
“That tracks.”
“Less tracking. More foundation.”
She laughed. He smiled, and the smile loosened something behind her ribs that had been wound tight since the wedding.
“Your grandmother,” he said. “Tell me about her.”
“Nana Rose. She made me walk six blocks in the snow on Christmas Eve when I was nine because the only store with fresh tomatoes had run out and the closer store only had canned. She said if I wanted to learn to cook I needed to learn the difference. My feet were soaked. She made me hot chocolate when we got home and let me stir the sauce. That was the day I learned what mattered.”
“What happened to her?”
“Heart attack. Seven years ago. She made dinner Tuesday, called my mother Wednesday morning to complain about a salesman, and was gone by Wednesday night. The way she would have wanted. No fuss.”
“I would have liked to meet her.”
“She would have hated you.”
“Why?”
“Because you went to Harvard and your mother made me cry in a hallway when I was seventeen. Nana would have stayed mad about both for the rest of her life.”
He winced. “Fair.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Some of it was.”
“Probably.”
She took a sip of her coffee. He took a sip of his. The bell over the door chimed, a man came in, and the café went on existing without them.
“Thursday morning,” he said. “Still on?”
“I’ll be there.”
He stood and picked up his coffee. He looked down at her with an expression she couldn’t quite read.
