The question was a familiar one by this point. Melissa said the right things—about wanting June, about this being real, aboutfiguring it out together. But Melissa also went to galas alone and tensed when anyone mentioned the live-in nanny in public, and this morning she’d left before five without waking Lila, which was practical and necessary and also felt like something June wasn’t supposed to examine too closely.
She wasn’t being hidden. She didn’t think she was being hidden.
She just wasn’t sure what she was instead.
“Miss Hollis?” Lila was watching her over the rim of her cup. “You look sad.”
“I’m not sad. Just thinking.”
“About what?”
About your mother. About what I’m building and whether it’s real or whether I’m just warm and convenient and here.“About what to make for dinner. Any requests?”
“Can we do pasta again? The kind we made together?”
“Otter pasta?”
Lila almost smiled. “My otters turned into blobs.”
“The most delicious blobs I’ve ever eaten.” June finished her hot chocolate. “Come on. Let’s go home and make some blobs.”
She had the television on in the kitchen while she prepped, volume low, not really watching—just filling the silence. She’d been slicing tomatoes for about ten minutes when the local news made her set down the knife.
“—Senator Brandt’s infrastructure bill faces renewed pressure this week as Thornfield Development formally disputes the broadband allocation provisions. Meanwhile, questions persist about the senator’s focus ahead of the crucial committee vote, with sources close to the process suggesting Senator Brandt has been, quote, ‘distracted by personalmatters’ this summer. Senator Brandt’s office declined to comment—”
A file photo of Melissa filled the screen. Immaculate. Composed. Standing at a podium somewhere, every inch Senator Brandt.
June stared at it.
She understood, intellectually, that people were trying to dismantle what Melissa had spent years building. She’d known about Thornfield, about the pressure, about the way politics chewed through people who couldn’t maintain the performance. But hearing it on the news—seeing Melissa reduced to a file photo and a rumor about herfocus—made something cold settle in June’s chest that the rest of the evening couldn’t quite shake.
Distracted by personal matters.
She turned off the television and went back to the tomatoes, and Lila came down wanting to help set the table, and June let her, and dinner happened, and bath time, and three chapters of the otter book, and she tucked Lila in at eight-thirty and stood in the hallway afterward in the quiet dark.
Melissa had texted at five, then again at seven—running late, don’t wait—and June saved her a plate and kneaded bread dough she didn’t need and waited without meaning to.
Just after ten, the front door opened. Heels on the hallway floor, then silence where they were removed, and then Melissa in the kitchen doorway, looking exhausted and real and exactly like the thing June had been trying not to miss all day.
“You’re still up.”
“I’m always up.” June wiped her floury hands on a towel. “Long day?”
“The longest.” Melissa crossed to the island. “The committee vote got pushed back again. Thornfield is running out the clock.”
“I saw something about it,” June said. “On the news. They said you’d been distracted. By personal matters.”
Melissa went very still. Then: “It’s not specific yet.”
“No. But it will be.”
“Probably.” Melissa held her gaze. “June—”
“I’m not scared,” June said, which was mostly true. “I just… I watched that and I thought about what’s at stake for you, and then I thought about the fact that I woke up in your bed this morning, and those two things are—” She stopped. “They don’t fit together easily.”
“No,” Melissa said quietly. “They don’t.”
“And I keep thinking—” June set down the towel. “We probably have an end date we’re not saying out loud. Summer ends. Things change. The bill, the pressure, whatever your ex-husband is planning—it’s all closing in, and I’m in here making pasta and I’m braiding Lila’s hair and it feels—” She shook her head. “It feels like something I’m going to miss before it’s even over.”
