He asks her about food the way he used to ask me about fighting. Rapid-fire questions like he’s genuinely curious, like the world just split open and there’s a whole landscape insideit he didn’t know existed. She answers everything with the patience of a woman who was born to teach, and sometimes she pulls him off his chair to show him something on the stove, and he hunches over the pan with wide eyes and says, “Wait, that’s it?”
“That’s all it is,” she says. “Butter and flour and patience. Lance burns it because he has none.”
“Every time?”
“Without fail.”
“I’m right here,” I say from the couch.
Percy grins at me and goes back to stirring whatever Genevieve has him working on.
This is what I wanted to build. Not just the training program, which Paxton and I are still putting together, butthis. A kitchen table where a kid can sit and do college homework without being afraid. A place where the only thing anyone asks of him is whether he wants seconds.
Cavall drops Virgil at Percy’s feet and sits down, tail wagging. Percy scratches behind his ears without looking up from the pan.
“I think your dog wants a taste,” he says.
“That’s because Genevieve taught him bad manners.”
Genevieve throws a dish towel at my head. I catch it, and she narrows her eyes, and Percy laughs so hard he almost drops the pan.
That night, after Percy has left and the dishes are done and Cavall is asleep in his bed with Virgil tucked under his chin, I find Genevieve on the porch.
She’s wrapped in a blanket, her legs tucked beneath her on the Adirondack chair, a glass of wine balanced on the armrest. The sky over Verona County Park is clear and wide, and the stars are out in a way they often are here. Thick and clustered.
I sit down beside her and take the wine from her hand and drink from it.
“Percy looked happy today,” she says.
“Yeah.” I hand the glass back. “He’s getting there.”
“He asked me if he could come on Wednesdays, too.”
My throat tightens. “What’d you say?”
“I said he could come whenever he wants. And that I’d teach him my dad’s cassoulet recipe if he promised to stop bringing gas station chips into my kitchen.”
“Did he agree?”
“Immediately.” She smiles. “He said, and I quote, ‘Miss D, I would sell my soul for that cassoulet.’”
“Miss D.”
“I know. He’s very polite for someone who once held a knife to your chest.”
“He didn’t hold itto my chest. He held itnearmy chest. There’s a distinction.”
“There really isn’t.”
I snort. She leans into me, her head finding the space between my shoulder and my jaw that she’s claimed as hers. I press my nose into her hair and breathe her in.
“My dad called today,” she says.
“How is he?”
“Good. Busy. The case is moving, but he can’t say much. He did say to tell you that the prosecutors are pleased with yourtestimony.”
“That’s code for ‘they haven’t decided to arrest me yet.’”
