Page 27 of The Sound of Harmony

“Ah. We’ve taken the same flights.”

“I think they’re all like that,” Kendrick said.

She waited for him to continue, to joke about snoring passengers or lost luggage, but now it was his turn to be silent.

“I won’t miss flying,” he finally said, “but I’ll miss travel.”

Emma almost mentioned trains and boats and buses, but he’d undoubtedly thought of that already. She wished she was in the same room with him, to touch his hand, to give him some reassurance, or at least connection.

“But I’ve heard of these mysterious things called roots,” he said. “I guess people grow them when they stay in one place too long.”

“Or when they stay in one place for the exact right amount of time,” Emma said. “Some people enjoy having them.”

“I grew up spending every third or fourth year in DC. And I’d be with kids who went to the same school with the same friends from kindergarten all the way through graduation. I couldn’t imagine it. They might as well have been talking about fairies or unicorns.”

“I must be a unicorn, then,” Emma said. “I did that.”

“In Cannondale?” Kendrick asked.

“I grew up near Chicago.” She was surprised he couldn’t hear it in her voice. But maybe she’d lost the distinctive accent when she lived in Tennessee. She’d lost so much of herself there, why not that as well? “I spent some time in Nashville, and then moved to Cannondale to be near my sister.”

“Older or younger?” he asked.

“Gwendolyn is a year older,” Emma said. “I know sisters that close in age aren’t supposed to get along, but we always have. She’s super overprotective and I kind of love that about her.”

“What’s she protecting you from?”

Emma’s words caught in her throat as she tried to figure out what—and how much—to say.

“It’s just that I’ve never met a guardian angel before,” Kendrick went on. “Does she have wings, or…”

“Gwendolyn is more like the angel with the flaming sword,” Emma said. “She has a heart as big as the world and no tolerance for fools.”

“She sounds terrifying and amazing.”

“She is.”

“So why Nashville?” Kendrick asked. “Did you organize houses there too?”

“I was married, briefly, and I worked with my ex-husband. But I kept our house very tidy.” Jonah had appreciated that, then had come to expect it, then outright demanded it.

“And I’ll make sure your place looks incredible when it’s done,” Emma added quickly. She opened the cupboard where she kept her plastic containers and started matching lids to bowls.

“I can already picture it,” Kendrick said.

“You haven’t even seen my plans.”

“I don’t have to. I stalked your website and the ‘after’ pictures are so appealing I want to live in them.”

Emma was still thinking about unicorns. Mythical. Not real. Like this moment, standing in her kitchen, talking to a man who made her stomach flutter and her toes tingle. A man who hung on her every word, aching to hear more. How could this be happening?

“What did your ex-husband—” Kendrick started at the same time that Emma said, “Now that you have a house—”

They both stopped. Laughed. “Go ahead,” Kendrick said.

The polite thing to say would be no, you go ahead and then they’d both dance around it until they’d forgotten what they were going to say. But Emma took the offered invitation because she knew that Kendrick was going to ask what her ex-husband did for a living. She wasn’t ready to go there.

“I was wondering what you’ll do differently now that you have a house,” she said.