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“Why?”
I look back at her. “You come home tired.”
Laura leaves one hand on the strap of her purse and looks at me. Her expression changes in a way I can’t read.
“It needs salt,” I add.
Laura comes closer and tastes what I offer her. “Definitely salt.”
I reach for it. “I can fix that.”
Her smile is small, but it stays. “You probably can.”
I turn back to the skillet before the garlic can burn again. Laura moves beside me, close enough that her arm brushes mine as she reaches for a plate.
Later, while we eat, she tells me about a manager at the hospital. I tell her Locke is making Rachel a box she didn’t ask for. Neither story matters to anyone but us. I like that.
That feels important anyway.
Laura came home tired, and for once I had something waiting for her. Something I made. Something she didn’t have to give me first.
Chapter Fifteen
Laura
Kell’s financial independence has arrived in the form of stronger opinions about art supplies. Meredith bought Kell’s painting Monday evening. I got his money into the temporary account and gave him the card, while Blair started working on the paperwork he’ll need for an account of his own. By Tuesday, he’s bought two new canvases, replaced nearly every tube of paint I paid for, and informed me that the expensive catalyst wedge is worth the money and he wants a whole set. I come into the kitchen after work and stop. Every cabinet door is closed.
Kell is at the stove. The wicker mat I haven’t seen since Sunday is on the kitchen table.
“You closed them.”
He glances toward the cabinets. “You don’t like them open.”
“You knew that before.”
“Before, it was funny.”
“And now?”
“Now it isn’t.”
I stand here for a second longer than the situation warrants. He just changed it.
It’s such a small thing that I almost miss what it means. Kell is still Kell. He still argues with me, leaves paint where paint has no business being, and treats half my household rules as opening positions for negotiation. But when something actually matters to me, he notices.
I set my purse down. Something is warming in a skillet, but my attention goes to the mat.
“Are we decorating now?”
“No.”
“Good. I was already trying to think of a polite place to tell you to put it.”
The mat is better than the first version he brought home from Locke’s workshop. The edges are straight, the pattern tight and regular without being perfectly uniform, and the green willow has dried to a softer brown.
Kell runs his fingers across one corner. “I want to tell you something.”
That gets my attention. “Okay.”
