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Biddy nods with obvious satisfaction. “That was our idea.”
“I had no say in it,” Bane says as he sets the roast chicken on the table.
Mara places a basket of warm rolls beside it and smiles at me. “They held a family meeting. It was really something.”
“I had lots to say,” Babs insists.
“You outlasted everyone,” Bane corrects as he pulls my chair out. “There’s a difference.”
The apartment smells of rosemary, roasted garlic, and fresh bread. Crayons still cover one end of the kitchen island, a stuffed unicorn hangs over the back of a dining chair, and a pair of tiny sneakers sits abandoned near the hallway with Sprout stretched beneath the table, already tracking every plate with hopeful determination.
Every visit makes it easier to forget Bane is crazy rich these days. The apartment belongs to this family long before it belongs to a billionaire.
Dinner rolls from one topic to the next as serving bowls make their way around the table. Mara asks how my parents are doing in Connecticut and whether my mother still mails care packages.
“Every few weeks,” I tell her. “She worries I forget to eat.”
Mara glances at my plate before looking back at me. “I suspect mothers develop that instinct for a reason.”
Babs finishes her potatoes, points her fork across the table, and announces, “Spider-Man should babysit us.”
Biddy barely looks up from her bread. “He’d never make us go to bed.”
“He saves people.”
“So does Wonder Woman.”
“He can swing us!”
“He’d swing inside the house,” Biddy says, finally looking at her sister. “Daddy would be sooo grumpy.”
Bane lifts both hands in surrender as he reaches for the butter. “I’m staying out of this one.”
“Smart choice,” Mara says with a smile.
Babs considers another argument, then shrugs and takes another bite of her roll. “Fine. It’s a tie.”
Mara passes me the salad bowl. “Do you cook?”
“I can.”
She smiles. “You just don’t get home in time.”
“Usually.”
She nods as though she’d expected that answer, then asks, “What did you think your life would look like by now?”
I smile before I can stop myself, turning my fork through the potatoes on my plate. Beverly Hills flashes through my mind alongside Spencer, the house that always felt borrowed, and the apartment waiting for me after dinner.
“Different,” I say.
Mara studies me over the rim of her glass. “Different in a good way?”
I let out a quiet breath and meet her eyes. “I don’t think I’d have recognized the good parts.”
The answer seems to satisfy her because she reaches for the salad bowl instead of pressing any further.
“Life has a habit of improving the plans we make for ourselves,” she says as she passes it across the table, and the conversation drifts naturally toward dessert before anyone has the chance to dwell on everything that goes unsaid.
