“Well, then what?”
“Then we just cycle back to Nina, Harper, Claire. Four rounds of three, twelve months.”
Harper nodded.
“A very organized rotation, Claire.”
“Well, I am a third-grade teacher, so organization is kind of my thing. I could get us in a single-file line like that!” She snapped her fingers.
“You organized the karaoke song list by genre before we even got over to the bar.”
“Oh, that was just basic categorization,” Claire said, waving her hand.
“Claire, you made a spreadsheet.”
“Spreadsheets are important to life.”
Nina laughed.
It was becoming a regular thing to hear Nina laugh again.
Harper liked it. She liked seeing Nina with her hair down, Nina getting into the car without sitting in the driveway for ten minutes first.
“I have an idea for month three,” Claire said.
Before she could say it, Nina shook her head. “Wait, actually, can I just go out of order?”
Claire and Harper both looked at her.
“But the rotation?—”
“I know the rotation says it’s Claire’s turn,” Nina said, “but I have something, something I’ve been thinking about since our birthday dinner, and if I don’t say it right now, I’m going to talk myself out of it.”
Harper recognized that voice. It was the voice Nina used when something really mattered, so much that she could barely get it out, like when she told them she was pregnant with Lucia, or the same voice she used on the phone the morning David died.
“Go ahead,” Harper said.
Nina was looking out at the ocean, which felt like it had nearly killed them about twenty minutes ago.
“A cooking class. Oaxacan food. David’s grandmother’s recipes. There’s a woman in North Charleston, Señora Morales. Anyway, she teaches out of her home kitchen. She’s from the same region as David’s family. Elena told me about her months ago, and I just kept meaning to sign up, but I never did.”
She paused.
“I was too scared because… Going there felt like admitting I needed to learn the things David already knew, like the recipes he grew up with and the food his grandmother made. He was the one who always cooked that stuff. He was the one who carried on that part of his family, and learning them from a stranger felt like admitting he’s really gone and that somebody else has to teach me now. Like maybe I didn’t take the time to learn from my soulmate before he was gone.”
Nobody spoke.
A pelican dove into the surf, and Harper thought of David, who had been exactly that kind of man, all heart, no pretension, bobbing down and getting the fish every time.
“But I promised Lucia,” Nina continued. “I promised her that I would write it all down. David’s recipes, Elena’s recipes, everything. But I can’t write down what I don’t know.” She looked at Claire and then at Harper. “So that’s my pick, if you’ll let me go out of turn.”
Harper reached over and took the thermos from Nina. Not because she wanted a drink, but because she wanted Nina’s hands free so she could hold them.
Harper Ellis, who touched people the way cats touch water, held Nina’s cold, wet hands.
“You don’t need anybody’s permission to go out of turn. It’s your pact, too.”
“We’re there,” Claire said. “You just tell us when. And I think this pact only works if we let each other get what we need out of it. There’s no right way to do it.”
