Page 83 of Honeyfires

She sat down next to me with a sound of pure vindication. "Yes! That's the point! He's brooding and impossible and completely undone by someone he didn't expect, and he has no idea how to handle any of it." She looked at me meaningfully.

"I'm not brooding."

"You're a little brooding."

"I'm thoughtful. There's a difference."

"There is not, actually, a difference." She curled her legs under her and picked up Persuasion from the side table, which she'd apparently been rereading for approximately the hundredth time this year, by my count.

"What chapter are you on?" she asked.

"Three."

"Oh, you're going to love chapter—actually, never mind. Keep reading."

"What happens in the chapter?"

"Keep reading."

"Vera."

"I won't spoil it." She opened her own book. "Just know that Rochester is about to do something that is objectively unreasonable, and you're going to find it compelling despite yourself."

"How do you know what I'll find compelling?"

She gave me a look over the top of her glasses. "Petra. I know exactly what you find compelling. You're my baby. We're in love. I know you."

I opened the book. She was right, which I was not going to admit out loud.

We read like that for two hours, shoulders touching, her foot occasionally migrating onto my lap, trading coffee duties, Vera reading sentences aloud when they particularly pleased her and me pretending to be less absorbed in Rochester's terrible decisions than I was. Which was very absorbed, to my dismay. Rochester was going to have to reckon with himself significantly, and I could see it coming.

"This is nice," she said, not looking up from her page.

"It is."

"I used to read alone on Sunday mornings. I thought it was fine. I thought I liked it enough, but something was always missing, you know?" She turned a page. "Turns out I was just not reading with you yet."

I set down Jane Eyre and looked at her, this woman who had shown up in my hallway in Mary Janes and guessed my name and systematically occupied every part of my life until I couldn't remember what it had looked like before her.

"Vera."

"Mm?"

"I'm glad you moved to San Jacinto."

She lowered Persuasion slowly. Her expression, when she looked at me, was tender and soft. "Me too." She shifted, swinging her legs over and tucking herself against my side. "Now read your book. Rochester is about to do the thing."

"What thing?"

"The thing, Petra. You'll know it when you get there."

Half an hour later, when I finally found out, I chucked the book clear across the room, and Vera laughed and laughed and laughed.

My Grandmother's Recipes Are a Suggestion, Not Law

Chapter Fifteen

The flour incident happened on a Wednesday.