“Absolutely not.” The words come out faster than intended and she grins. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“I’m not looking at you like anything.”
“You served him,” she says, trying and failing to keep a straight face. “At my house, Lindsay.”
“I did.”
“On a Sunday.”
“Val.” I point at her.
“Twice!” she adds.
“Well, he should stop doing things that can get him served at your house on Sundays. I’m not the problem here.”
She dissolves into laughter, and I follow despite myself, the last of whatever tension I’d been carrying quietly leaving the building. She reaches across the table and puts her hand over mine.
“I love you,” she says simply.
“I love you too.”
We smile at each other for a moment.
“Okay,” I say. “Go ahead and tell me the reason you’ve been calling. And don’t say you were worried. Real reason.”
She bites her cheek. A tell I’ve known for fifteen years.
“Well,” she says, drawing it out.
“Valentina.”
She ducks into the enormous tote bag at her feet, rummaging around with great purpose, and surfaces holding a magazine sothick it could double as a weapon. She drops it on the table between us with a decisive thud.
A nursery catalog.
I look at it. I look at her. She is radiating innocence.
“Which sheets,” she says, already flipping to a dog-eared page, “do you think I should get these to welcome her home? Salvatore says they all look the same, and I need someone with actual taste.”
I stare at her. “You called me twice in twenty-four hours. Because of sheets.”
“They’re important sheets, Lindsay.”
“She’s a newborn. She won’t even know.”
“I will know,” Valentina says firmly, sliding the catalog across to me. “Now look.”
I look.
And just like that, two hours vanish. We go through the entire catalog with a pen she produces from the same bottomless bag. We argue about thread counts and whether yellow is cheerful or alarming. I circle the practical ones. She circles the ones that look like something from a French countryside dream. We order a pastry platter because she’s not sure which one she wants and I’d rather not spend another hour waiting for her to decide.
It’s easy. It’s warm. It’s exactly what I didn’t know I needed today.
My phone buzzes, and I see a message from someone I’ve been trying to get a hold of asking me to meet with him. I check my watch and blink. It’s nearly dark outside.
“Oh… I’m sorry, Val, but I have to go,” I say, reaching for my shoes under the table.
“Already?”
