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“I know a man runs the grounds at my family’s estate who’s been fighting the same war far longer than a decade. I’ve absorbed more about aphids than any reasonable person should over the centuries. Ask me about scale insects sometime. I have opinions.”
“I might take you up on that, gladly.” Evelyn refilled her own cup, delighted, the glow of someone who’d found an unexpected ally in a war she’d been fighting alone for years. “Nobody in this family has ever once had opinions about scale insects. Romily thinks a garden is something you walk past on your way to somewhere more interesting, always has, since she was small.”
“That’s not fair. I complimented your roses. Out loud. This year, specifically.”
“Centuries.” Evelyn repeated the word slowly, testing its weight, unmoved by it in a way that told Romily her mother had already done the internal math needed on that subject and had settled it as a detail rather than a problem. “Well. At least you’ve had time to learn the important things.”
Evelyn set her cup down with the decisiveness of a woman about to change subjects altogether, and reached across the table to pat Norden’s hand, which Romily recognized, with dawning horror, as the exact gesture her mother made before launching into a story with no survivors.
“Has Romily told you about the chili.”
“Mom.”
“I haven’t heard a word about any chili.” Norden’s interest sharpened immediately, visibly, a man scenting blood in the water. “Should I have?”
“She was fourteen. Wanted to impress a boy from her class who was coming for dinner, decided her own cooking wasn’t dramatic enough, so she added an entire jar of the hottest peppers she could find at the store without asking anyone whether that was a reasonable quantity.” Evelyn’s eyes were already bright with the telling of it. “The boy cried. At the table. In front of both of us. She still maintains it was a seasoning issue and not a crime.”
“It was a seasoning issue.”
“You made a fourteen-year-old boy weep into his napkin.”
“He had a low tolerance. That’s not the same as me committing a crime.” Romily could feel her face going warm and mortified, and refused, on principle, to look at Norden’s expression, which she could already tell was going to be insufferable. “I stand by the chili. The chili was ambitious.”
“The chili was a war crime, and I have photographic evidence in the hall closet if anyone wants a look at his face afterward.” Evelyn was fully delighted now, a mother who’d been waiting years for an audience who’d truly appreciate the material. “There’s an entire album. Baby pictures, the chili incident, her first kiln explosion — she was sixteen, put too much in at once, singed her eyebrows clean off for a week and told everyone at school she was trying a new look.”
“Those eyebrows grew back fine, and I will be taking that album with me when we leave, for evidence disposal purposes.”
“You will not. That album stays exactly where it is.” Evelyn turned back to Norden with the satisfied air of a general who’d successfully planted a flag. “I’ll show you properly next time. There’s a good one of her at eight, covered head to toe in glass dust, absolutely furious that nobody would let her near the actual furnace yet.”
“I’d like to see all of it,” Norden said, visibly delighted with the entire turn the conversation had taken, “in detail, and at length, ideally soon.”
“There isn’t going to be a next time for the album specifically,” Romily said, to no one who was currently listening to her.
Norden reached over and found her hand under the table, thumb moving once across her knuckles in a gesture that read much like an apology, given he was clearly enjoying every second of her suffering.
Her mother liked him.
This surprised Romily a good deal more than it surprised her mother, who had clearly reached her own conclusion sometime around the second cup of tea.
Her phone buzzed a fifth time on the drive home, and a sixth thirty seconds after that.
JESSA: it’s been an hour. WELL??
Mom likes him, she typed, thumb hovering over send for one extra second before she committed to it.
Three seconds of silence. Then: JESSA: I’M LOSING MY MIND. CALL ME IMMEDIATELY.
JESSA: also I need the aphid story in full, Marco says he heard secondhand that there was an aphid story
JESSA: MARCO KNOWS BEFORE ME. UNACCEPTABLE.
A third text landed while she was still reading the second, this one from Marco directly, no preamble, as though he’d been standing over Jessa’s shoulder the entire time waiting for an opening.
MARCO: an eight-hundred-year-old dragon discussed APHIDS with your MOTHER. I need this in a three-act structure by tomorrow morning. This is the best thing that has ever happened to any of us and I include my own wedding in that assessment
MARCO: also tell him I said well done. Genuinely. I don’t hand that out lightly.
Romily smiled down at the phone despite herself, and didn’t answer either of them yet, saving the full account for later the way you saved the good parts of a story for someone who’d truly appreciate the details.
