She did not entirely understand why, except that when Harper held up the napkin, something in Nina’s chest had shifted. It wasn’t a big shift, not the kind you could see from outside.
More like a window cracking open just an inch in a room that had been sealed shut for a long time. The kind where dust coughs out between the cracks and chokes you.
“I think it’s cool,” Lucia said.
She said it kind of casually as she spooned out her yogurt, not looking at Nina, because teenagers deliver their most important statements without looking at their parents.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
A pause.
“I think Dad would think it was cool, too.”
Nina’s grip tightened around her coffee mug. Lucia rarely mentioned her father. When she did, it was brief, bright, and over before you could brace yourself.
“He would,” Nina said. “And he’d probably want to come.”
“Oh, he would definitely want to come,” Lucia said, laughing.
“And then he’d be terrible at whatever it was and love every second of it.”
They smiled at each other for a brief moment.
Lucia picked up her backpack. “I gotta go. The bus comes in ten minutes.”
“Do you have money for lunch?”
“Mom, nobody uses cash.”
“Okay, well, is your account thing loaded?”
“It’s fine.” She paused for a moment at the door. “Go to the grocery store. For real this time.”
“I will.”
“And don’t sit in the parking lot for forty-five minutes before you go in.”
Nina hadn’t realized that Lucia knew about that. Of course she did, though. Lucia noticed everything the same way David did.
“I’ll try,” Nina said.
“That’s all I’m asking.”
Lucia gave a small wave and then was gone, the screen door banging shut behind her.
Nina stood alone in the kitchen with her one cup of coffee, the sound of the marsh, the napkin on the fridge, and the daughter who had just asked her, in the most Lucia way possible, to please come back to life.
Elena arrived at eleven with a casserole dish and a purpose, as usual.
Nina heard the car before she saw it because Elena drove a fifteen-year-old Honda Civic that announced its presence the way a brass band might in a parade.
The engine rattled, and three mechanics had failed to fix it, but Elena refused to buy a new car because this one had been David’s last car.
It was the one he had driven the day he died, and Elena would sooner walk to Beaufort barefoot than let it go. She acted as though it were a classic car that would be worth a lot of money one day.
That was very doubtful.
