“Mostly. I helped with the oven part.”
For a moment, Senator Brandt just stood there, looking at the cookies like she’d never seen baked goods before. Then Lila came into the kitchen, her hands still damp from washing, and stopped short when she saw her mother.
“Mom! You’re home!” She caught herself, smoothed her expression back into something more composed. “I mean. Hi. How was your day?”
“Long.” Senator Brandt crossed to her daughter and bent down to kiss the top of her head—a brief gesture, almost automatic, but genuine. “I see you made cookies.”
“Miss Hollis let me use the mixer. And I got to crack the eggs. I only got shell in the bowl once.”
“That’s very impressive.”
They ate dinner together, the three of them, and it was different from that first awkward night. Lila was more animated, telling her mother about the grocery store and the pancakes and the cookies, and the senator listened, asked questions, even laughed once, surprised out of her by something Lila said about the shape of one of the cookies looking like a dinosaur with a hat.
“This is delicious,” Senator Brandt said, gesturing to her plate. “The best meal I’ve had in weeks.”
June raised an eyebrow. “You’re a senator. Don’t you go to fancy dinners all the time? Rubber chicken fundraisers, at least?”
“Rubber chicken is exactly right. Overcooked protein and underdressed salads, served lukewarm while someone talks about zoning regulations.” Senator Brandt took another bite. “There’s something different about food someone actually made. In a real kitchen. With actual… care.”
She said the last word like it was unfamiliar, like she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.
“Where did you learn to cook like this?” Senator Brandt asked. “All culinary school?”
“Some of it. But most of it, my grandmother.” June took a sip of her water. “She believed that food was how you showed people you cared about them. I spent a lot of time in her kitchen growing up.”
“Is that why you went to culinary school? Because of her?”
“Partly. I always knew I wanted to cook. The school was just… a way to make it official, I guess. Learn the technical stuff.”
“But the restaurant industry wasn’t the right fit,” Senator Brandt said, apparently remembering what June had said during the interview.
June had been dreading this conversation, the inevitable moment when she’d have to explain why a trained chef was working as a nanny instead of running a restaurant. During the interview, she’d managed to gloss over it, but now, eating dinner, was a different story.
“I loved the cooking,” she said carefully. “The rest of it was… harder.”
“The hours must be grueling,” the senator said.
June nodded. “They are. But it was more… the stress. The attitudes. The… well, the people.”
Senator Brandt nodded, and June braced herself for follow-up questions—the probing, the curiosity, the polite interrogation that most people couldn’t resist. But the senator just took another bite of her casserole and let the subject drop.
The conversation moved on, and June breathed out, her shoulders coming down.
After dinner, Lila insisted on showing her mother the rest of the cookies, explaining in great detail which ones she’d decorated and why the pink ones were superior and how Miss Hollis had let her lick the bowl even though that probably wasn’t hygienic. Senator Brandt examined each cookie with appropriate seriousness, and when Lila offered her a pink one, she ate it right there in the kitchen, sprinkles and all.
“Delicious,” she declared to a beaming daughter. A single sprinkle stuck to the corner of her mouth that June forced herself to ignore. Then the senator licked her lips and the sprinkle was gone.
June started clearing the dishes, carrying plates to the sink while the senator helped Lila wrap up the remaining cookies for tomorrow.
She turned from the sink to grab the serving dish from the table, and found Senator Brandt standing right there, reaching for the same thing.
Their eyes met.
June had seen Senator Brandt a handful of times over the past week—brief glimpses, mostly, a figure in a blazer disappearing out the front door or footsteps overhead late at night. But this was different. This was close, barely two feet between them, and Senator Brandt’s grey-blue eyes were unguarded in a way June hadn’t seen before. Tired, yes, but something else too. Something that looked almost like surprise.
A flicker passed between them. Brief, electric, impossible to name.
June looked away first.
