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“Thanks,” Melisa said, relief audible in her voice. “John knows which apartment it is. I’ll owe you a favor.”
Now that he could get behind. Grant imagined the details about Melinda he’d wrangle from her.
John pulled the car into a parking spot in an apartment complex. He turned the engine off and caught Grant’s eye in the rearview mirror.
Grant’s brow furrowed. “You ever do this for her before?”
“I’ve driven her and her friends,” John said. “We have mutual friends. But I’ve never been involved with anything like this.”
“That makes two of us,” Grant said.
The three men opened doors and stood on mostly dry asphalt. As one, they turned to face the row of apartments.
“Where are we headed?” Buck asked.
John scanned the row of tasteful conjoined buildings with muted green staircases.
“There.” John led the way across the parking lot and below one of the nondescript stairwells to a tan door. He raised his hand to knock but turned to the two men behind him. “Ready for this?”
“No way in hell,” said Grant.
“Can’t wait,” said Buck. Grant gave his father a hard stare. There was no need for attitude.
John knocked and they waited, and Grant held his breath tightly enough for all three of them. After a moment, light footsteps approached the door. The knob turned. The door opened.
~
Melinda’s stomach was in knots. Her hair was smoothed to the point of becoming a swim cap. Why had she trusted her brother with this harebrained scheme? Why had she not reached out to Grant herself and prevented Much Ado à la Max Sen? What’s the food parallel for way-too-late regret? A hangover. Not as clever as she would have liked, but painfully accurate.
Two bottles of wine simmered in a saucepan with cloves, cardamom, cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, sliced orange, nutmeg, and sugar. There was her mother, sunk into Melinda’s low leather couch and stringing popcorn and cranberries into a garland. There was her father grading papers beside her. Katrina’s feet rested on his lap.
The two of them in the same house. At the same time. Melinda couldn’t remember a time since before adolescence when family had felt like this.
“Pita ji,” she called from the kitchen, and her father peered at her above the rim of his glasses.
“Meye?” he called back. Daughter. His accent was so much better than hers. It made her feel real and connected to him, no matter the years they’d spent distant. It made her feel connected to the culture that she’d never known in person. Reuniting with her father opened a world she thought had been closed to her.
“Where is my payesh?” She raised her eyebrows, a smile on her lips.
“Where is my patience, Meye?” he called back, all severity and prudishness. His hand swirled the air. “These tests will not grade themselves. And then where would my students be? Cut adrift in the sea of uncertain numerals.”
Her mother laughed beside him.
“You’ve been done for ages, Aarjav. You’re doing the crossword and we both know it. Go make the rice pudding before she takes matters into her own hands and uses honey instead of sugar.”
“Refined sugar is terrible for you!” Melinda scolded her mother. Their banter warmed her spirit, not to mention eased her nerves.
“Oh?” Her mother didn’t look up from her garland. “And what about that spiced wine, hmm? What’s in that?”
“Coconut sugar!” Melinda shot back and waited for their laughter.
“Heaven preserve us,” her mother said, skewering a cranberry.
“Right,” said her father. He tossed his portfolio of papers and contraband newspaper onto the coffee table. “I’d better get in there before she cancels dinner and suggests takeout.”
“Big talk,” Melinda said as she tapped her wooden spoon on the side of the stockpot and rested it on a dish. “I remember the year we scrapped the home-cooked meal and ordered pizza.”
“Yes,” said her father as he walked only a little bit stiffly toward the kitchen. “To this day I can’t even mention dry turkey or over-salted potatoes without backlash.”
