“Wentworth. I mean it.”
He yawned.
I put the vacuum away.
The soup went onto the stove at eleven—good San Marzano tomatoes, garlic, butter, a splash of cream, and the basil I’d bought at the farmer’s market on Saturday. The apartment started to smell like garlic and butter and the faint, sweet edge of tomato, and it immediately felt more like a place someone might want to eat. I took the shortbread out of the oven and set it on the rack to cool, and the vanilla smell layered in on top of the soup smell, and between the two of them, my kitchen became the kind of kitchen that made you want to sit down in it.
I was standing at the stove stirring the soup, telling myself for the fourth or fifth time that I was a person capable of making lunch for a man without having a small nervous breakdown, when someone knocked on my apartment door.
My heart leapt straight into my throat. It was ten-thirty. Jasper was not supposed to be here for an hour and a half. Jasper had said noon, and I had already decided Jasper was the kind of man who meant noon when he said noon, and if he was an hour and a half early, I was going to have a genuine physical crisis in my own hallway.
I wiped my hands on a dish towel and padded to the door in my socks. I opened it and found Eliza standing on the landing with a small soft bundle in her hands and a look on her face that was equal parts mischief and tenderness.
I closed my eyes for a second in pure relief.
“Hi,” Eliza said. “I didn’t text because I knew you’d tell me not to come.”
“I would not.”
“You would absolutely.”
I stepped back and let her in.
“I read the whole thread,” she said, starting to unwrap it. “Lucy was right about one thing. Greenisyour color. You just don’t wear it enough.”
She pulled the bundle open, and I actually stopped breathing for a second. Inside was a scarf. A long, soft, impossibly pretty thing in a pale sage green—silk, from the drape of it—with an elegance that made it look like it would look good on anyone. I ran my fingers across it before I could stop myself.
“Eliza. This is beautiful.”
“I know.” She was watching my face with a small, satisfied smile. “I bought it forever ago. I thought it would look good on me, and it doesn’t—it washes me out, I look like a sad ghost. It’s been sitting in my drawer for a year waiting for someone who could actually wear it.” She grinned, “That’s you. Always has been. Put it on with the cream sweater.”
“I can’t borrow this.”
“You’re not borrowing it. I’m giving it to you. Don’t make a thing of it.”
“Eliza.”
“I said don’t make a thing of it.”
I laughed—a small, watery laugh that had no business being in my throat this early in the morning—and wrapped the scarf loosely around my hand just to feel it. It was softer than anything I owned. She was still watching me with that expression, the one she’d had since she was little, the one that meantI did a good thing, and I am going to enjoy watching you realize it.
“I’m not staying,” she said. “I just wanted you to have it before he got here.” A pause. A softer look. “And I wanted to tell you I’m glad. About today. Whatever it is.”
“It’s just lunch.”
“Mm-hm.”
“Eliza.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
She stepped forward and pulled me into a quick, warm hug. She smelled like the Coffee Cabin—espresso and cinnamon and a faint sweetness underneath—and for a second I just let myself be held by my little sister, who had somehow, without my noticing, become someone who showed up at the door with scarves and soft silences and knew exactly what to say and when to say it.
“Okay,” she said, stepping back. “I’m going. Don’t burn the soup.”
“I’m not going to burn the soup.”
“You burned the soup last Thanksgiving.”
