Page 149 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

“You had to ask.”

“I had to ask everyone.”

My throat closes.

“I started with Fern,” he says. “I went to her kitchen and explained that I wanted to make you dinner and that I couldn’t taste what I made.”

“You told her that?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

“Well, that’s a fix. Then she put on her coat and took me outside to discuss parsnips.”

I laugh. “After that?”

“It became marginally easier.”

“Marginally.”

“Very marginally. Mrs. Libby found recipes. Bess tasted things. Theo explained stock to me for an hour and then told me I was making it unnecessarily complicated. Harriet located Dot. Lucy arrived with those.” He looks at the orange cheese curls. “She also asked me nine questions about my intentions.”

“Only nine?”

“They were detailed.”

I put my hand over my mouth.

“Penny.”

“I’m okay.”

“You’re crying.”

“I can do both at the same time.”

“I’ve noticed.”

He waits while I look at the table, at the candles, at the bowl of orange cheese curls sitting in silver as old as the town, and at the door he had to stand behind because he made me garlic bread he couldn’t bear to be near.

“You asked half the town for help.”

“Yes.”

“For me.”

His eyes come back to mine.

“Last autumn, you put food in front of me knowing I would not eat it.”

“Not at first.”

“No. But after you knew, you kept doing it. You brought things to my house. You set places for me. You put a plate in front of me at your table when you knew perfectly well it would still be full at the end.”

“That wasn’t the point.”

“No,” says Julian. “It wasn’t. The point was the place.”