“Where’s Greg?”
“Nineteen ninety-five.”
“The Braves?”
“The Braves.”
Harper poured herself a glass of water and then leaned against the counter, her arms crossed.
For just a moment, Claire imagined them when they were twenty years old again, standing in their dorm at the College of Charleston, eating ramen and planning lives that had not happened yet.
It made Claire’s chest ache.
They’d all had such big plans. Big dreams. They would live together in a fancy apartment in NYC. Or maybe they would rent a villa in Italy and meet Italian men whose sole jobs would be to feed them pasta and grapes.
Greg had never once fed her grapes.
“She’s coming, right?” Harper asked.
They both knew who she was.
“She said she was.”
“You know that’s not the same thing as actually showing up.”
“I know.”
They looked at each other, and the worry they shared about Nina Vargas passed between them, as it had for the last eighteen months now.
Nina showed up at 6:22, which was a little late for the old Nina but practically a miracle for the Nina who had existed since her beloved David died. They gave her grace. She’d been through one of the worst things a spouse could go through.
Claire heard the car in the driveway first. There was a long pause. She and Harper both noticed it. The pause.
Nina did that a lot now. She got to where she was going, then stayed in the car for a while, as if she had to gather the pieces of herself before she could walk into a room and pretend they were all in the right place. As if she were a jigsaw puzzle scattered across the floor of her car, and it took her a while to pick up as many pieces as she could to be whole. There were always a few missing pieces.
Claire opened the front door and watched Nina come up the walkway. She was thinner than the last time Claire had seen her. It was not terribly alarming, but she did notice that her collarbones looked different from what they had been before.
She wore a soft gray cable-knit sweater. Claire immediately recognized it as one of David’s. He had bought it in Charleston on their tenth anniversary at that shop on Market Street that sold overpriced cashmere to tourists. David had always had good taste.
Nina wore it the way you wear a hug from someone who is no longer there to give one. It was obvious she was trying to physically wrap herself in the memory of her beloved husband.
She held a bottle of wine in one hand and a small potted succulent, wrapped in brown paper, in the other.
“Here, it’s a housewarming gift,” Nina said blankly, holding up the plant. “I know you’ve lived here for decades, but I haven’t been over in a while, so.” A small smile flickered across her face, like a fleeting ghost of a joke. Nina used to be so funny, but in the kind of way a person doesn’t even realize they’re funny. That was gone now. Claire hadn’t seen that side of her in almost two years now.
Claire wanted to wrap her in a blanket and not let her go for six months. Instead, she took the succulent.
“I love it. Come on in. Harper’s already halfway through the cheese board.”
“I am not!” Harper called from the kitchen. “All I’ve had are two crackers.”
“And a quarter pound of brie,” Claire said, pointing to the quickly emptying board.
“Well, brie doesn’t count. Brie is like a condiment.”
Nina’s mouth twitched, but it still was not quite a smile. It was the place where a smile would go if she had one to give. She stepped inside.
“It smells so good in here. I haven’t cooked a real meal in a couple of weeks. Poor Lucia has been living off frozen waffles.”
