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“Whichever is no trouble.”
“We’ll have lemonade,” she said. “And I have a little coffee cake left.”
“Can I help with anything?” he asked, watching her reach up to a tall cupboard to get out a pitcher.
“You were raised polite. I like that.” She waved him to the table. “Sit,” she said again.
He pulled out a chair from the small round table, watching her get something out from the freezer, squeezing it into the pitcher and then adding cold water from the faucet. Taking a wooden spoon from a container on the counter, she stirred it briskly.
The kitchen was like out of a movie. It was covered with wallpaper in a faded grass green, and the windows were covered with cheery yellow gauze curtains. The appliances looked older but cared for, and the linoleum on the floor was scratched in places. There was the faint hint of cinnamon in the air.
He’d never been in a kitchen like this, well-loved and lived in. His parents had a state-of-the-art kitchen that was lost on the two of them since neither cooked. His kitchen in Turin was modern, spotless after his housekeeper came every week and less so in between. It was a nice kitchen and he used it, but it didn’t have the warmth this one did.
Lottie brought over the pitcher first, setting it in the middle of the table, before going to get two glasses out of another cupboard. Setting those on the table, she uncovered a pan of coffee cake as he filled their glasses.
He waited until she brought over the cake and plates to ask, “Rachel isn’t close to her parents?”
“Hardly.” Lottie placed a fork and serviette in front of him before sitting down. “My son was useless. It pains me to admit that because I tried to raise him to be a good man, but he and his wife were never interested much in Rachel. She, and Chris, came to me after school most of the time. When her parents decided to move to Arizona, she asked if she could stay here. They were happy about that.”
He frowned. “She was lucky to have you.”
“I was lucky to have her too. She thinks I’m doing her a favor by having her here now, since her divorce, but I’m the lucky one. Who knows what kind of trouble I’d get into if she weren’t here?” She gestured to the plate. “You can tell me why you stopped by while you eat.”
“You don’t think I was randomly jogging by?” he asked, then he popped a bite of cake into his mouth.
Lottie snorted. “I wasn’t born yesterday, sweetheart. I doubt you do anything randomly.”
“True,” he conceded.
“And you’re smart, so you would have known Rachel was at work.” She waved her fork at him. “You’ve probably even talked with her today.”
He nodded. “Also true.”
“Which means you stopped by to see me.”
Not consciously, but as he’d seen with Erik, unconscious desires were just as strong as conscious ones. “I like Rachel.”
“No kidding.” Lottie rolled her eyes. “A blind man could see that.”
“The problem is I’m at a point in my life where I don’t know what comes next, and I feel like I should have that figured out before I get involved with someone.”
Lottie laughed. “Oh, sweetie, if you wait to figure things out before you live, you’ll never get anywhere. I’m almost eighty, and I still don’t have things figured out.”
“That’s not very reassuring,” he said with a wry smile.
“It’s the way it is. Ducks don’t line up. Just go to Lake Michigan and see.” She waved to the window. “You’re young to have a midlife crisis.”
“It’s less a crisis and more a crossroads.”
She nodded. “Is that why you came to Chicago?”
“We came for Erik. He wanted to find a nice girl. The only nice girl I’ve ever met, aside from my cousins, was a waitress I met here in Chicago when I visited with my parents once. So I thought we could bring him here and help him find someone.”
“Why, what a lovely thing to do.” She put her hand on her heart, sitting back in her chair. “Did he meet anyone yesterday?”
“No.” He lifted his glass. “It turns out he’s a little shy.”
“So you found a nice girl first, even though it sounds like you weren’t looking for one. Life is funny that way, isn’t it?” She studied him over the rim of her glass. “I’d wondered why you boys were here. The three of you don’t make sense together. You and Didier, yes. You can tell you have history together. But I couldn’t figure out how Erik fit in.”
