Not in Señora Morales’s kitchen, where the mole was still warm on their plates.
“Everything okay?” Nina asked, which was not really the same thing as asking what was wrong.
Claire knew the difference.
“Greg just wanted to know when I’d be home.” She took another sip of her drink. “He said I’m never home anymore.”
The table went quiet.
“And what did you say?” Harper asked.
“I said I’d be home when I was done.” She looked at her hands. They were still dusty with masa flour, and dried chili sat under her fingernails. “He didn’t ask how I was doing. He doesn’t really care about that kind of thing. He just wanted to know when I would be back. Probably to cook dinner.”
Harper set down her fork. Her jaw did that thing it did when it was holding back something sharp. Nina could see the words lining up behind Harper’s teeth.
He doesn’t deserve you.
He hasn’t noticed you in twenty years.
Why are you still counting to three before you say what you really think?
But Harper did not say any of that, because Harper, despite all her sharpness, knew when a friend just needed space more than they needed truth. So she reached over and squeezed Claire’s hand.
“Let’s clean up,” Señora Morales said, rising from the table. She was a woman with authority, redirecting the room. “And then I will send you home with enough mole for your families. Then you’ll come back, and we will make tamales another day.” She looked at Nina. “Your mother-in-law will expect tamales.”
“Oh, my mother-in-law expects everything,” Nina said.
They cleaned the kitchen together, washing dishes, wiping counters, putting things back in their places.
Claire dried the bowls carefully.
Harper organized the spice jars by height because Harper could never help herself.
Nina swept the floor and found, near the leg of the table, a small dollop of chocolate from the mole. She wiped it up with her finger and thought about this being the best day she had had in so long.
The drive home was quieter than normal. Claire drove, and Harper sat in the passenger seat with a container of mole balanced on her lap.
Somehow, she had managed the entire day without staining her beautiful silk blouse. It was a miracle. Nina considered it evidence of either the divine or of Harper’s sheer force of will.
Nina sat in the back with two containers, one for herself, one for Elena, because Señora Morales had insisted and because Nina wanted Elena to taste it.
She wanted Elena to know that someone else had taught her the recipe, that it was okay, and that the food hadn’t been lost when David died. It was still here, in a little kitchen in North Charleston, in Nina’s hands, and on index cards that she would one day give to her daughter.
The late-afternoon sun slanted through the windshield as they crossed the Ashley River. Claire’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, telling Nina more than any words could.
“You know, you don’t have to talk about it,” Nina said from the backseat, “but you can if you want.”
Claire was quiet for a long stretch of the road. They passed live oaks draped in moss, shadows across the asphalt.
“He’s not wrong,” Claire finally said. “I am gone a lot more than I used to be. Three Saturdays in a row now. I went shopping alone last Saturday, and I went to that new book club the Saturday before that.”
“Well, you’re allowed to leave your house on a Saturday, Claire. It’s not like you’re going out on dates with other men,” Harper said, looking over at her.
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
Claire didn’t answer. The road curved through a stretch of marsh.
