“They’re avant-garde.”
“I’m an artist. Respect the process.”
She snorts, presses a kiss to my cheek, and I feel it everywhere. She stirs sauce on the stove, her whole focus in the line of her jaw, the way she unconsciously bites her lip when she’s thinking. I’ve known Maddie’s laugh for years, but somehow it’s different, three feet away in her kitchen, with her teasing me about vegetables.
“Garlic next,” she says, pushing the bulb my way. “Three cloves.”
I nod, digging for words and coming up empty, so I focus on peeling the garlic. The first clove gives me a fight, stubborn to the last. I’m halfway through smashing it when Maddie’s hand wraps around my wrist, warm and sure.
“Like this,” she says, showing me. Her fingers work the skin free, neat and quick. Our hands tangle for a second, neither of us moving to let go.
We drift into easier conversation—the farmers market, Melvin and his eternal beef with the plumbing aisle. Simplestuff, comfortable. And then, because I’ve been carrying the words since the covered bridge, I say it.
“I miss him too.”
Maddie’s hand pauses on the spoon. She doesn’t lift her head.
“But I want you to know,” I say, a little surprised my voice comes out steady at all, “I don’t see you as his widow first. I just see you. I always have.”
She goes still, one hand fisted around the towel. There’s a long pause that says more than words, then she nods, sharp and final, and turns back to the stove. She stirs. When she speaks, her voice is even.
“Garlic’s burning.”
It isn’t, not even close, but the subject is dropped, and I’m silently grateful because my heart is hammering hard enough that I’m sure she can hear it.
Dinner is at the table, two places set, a whole extra chair between us. We both notice it; we just don’t say anything. The candles burn lower, pooling wax in little circles, and the sauce is better than anything I deserve credit for. Maddie tells a story about a guy who tried to return a hammer three years after buying it, swearing “the handle feels different.” I’m laughing so hard I nearly choke on my pasta, which would be a terrible way to go on what Anson has decided qualifies as a date.
There’s easy laughter, then pockets of comfortable quiet. We talk about the store, about Boston (just for a minute), about the studio in the back that I’d heard about but never seen. Maddie’s whole face lights up when she gets talking about painting, hands sketching invisible shapes, and for a second all I can think is: This is hers. Not his, not about anyone else. Hers.
The candles sink low, plates empty, wine halfway gone, and the warmth in my chest has nothing to do with alcohol, everything to do with the woman across from me, now lickingtomato sauce off her thumb with single-minded focus. I’m not even sure when it happened; I’m a goner.
She sets her fork down, looks straight at me, and in the candlelight her eyes go bluer, softer, like she’s finally letting something show.
“Come with me,” she says. “I want to show you something.”
The hallway is short and dark, single bulb overhead, the kind of fixture that’s probably as old as the house but still works. Maddie leads the way, socks silent against the floor, the dish towel trailing in one hand. Apron gone, she’s wearing a t-shirt and loose skirt, those same socks, and the sight of her ahead of me—the shape of her shoulders, hair loose at her neck—is enough to throw my heart into all new chaos.
She stops at the last door, hand on the knob, and glances back at me, steady.
“Just so you know,” she says. “It’s a mess.”
“It’s allowed to be.”
She opens the door and the studio opens up, wide and unexpected.
North-facing windows stretch across the far wall, blue-gray evening light pouring in, the kind Drew planned out just for her. The floor’s a patchwork of drop cloths, spills and splatters, all history underfoot. Stacks of canvases against the walls, some framed, some rough-edged, big enough to command their own space.
And the art.
Nothing about it is decorative; none of it belongs above a couch. The paintings are big, bruised colors and deep shadows: empty chairs in windowless rooms, red doors seen from down long, vanishing corridors, hardware store aisles stretching on and on. Human shapes, blurred and abstract, like echoes left behind.
I move slowly. My boots barely whisper on the drop cloths. I stop in front of each piece and just look, letting the paint do the talking.
Maddie hangs back by the door, arms folded, not defensive, just steadying herself. She’s showing me something real and waiting to see what I’ll do with it.
I pause at a smaller piece. A figure, a little more defined, standing at a window, one palm to the glass. The brush marks are rough, fast, urgent.
“Who’s watching?” I ask.
