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A slow blink. “Come again?”
“We might be pretending that we’re dating.”
“I might be having a stroke. Are you dating Finn Hughes or not?”
I roll my eyes. “It’s a fake thing, just to get Mom off my back about Alex Langley.”
“What about Langley?”
“She tried to set me up with him. Apparently he’s done mourning his late wife and ready to find a new baby-making machine. And like she said, I’m not getting any younger.”
His expression turns dark. “I’ll talk to her.”
“No, don’t. I can handle her. And this whole Finn thing should get her off my back for a while anyway. I’ll let her dream about wedding colors for a while before we break up.”
“Daphne’s wedding colors aren’t enough?”
“Nothing’s enough for Mom.”
“Christ.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“Are you okay, Eva? Seriously?”
I swallow around the knot in my throat. Leo knows what I was like at my lowest. He knows about the heartbreak. About the way it swallowed me whole. I lived in a state of waking slumber for a long time after that.
You could say that I was still in it when I was at the gala last night.
And I was woken with a kiss.
Chapter Six
Finn
Escape sounds like Eva Morelli laughing with joy when she gets a full house.
Reality sounds like dishes clanging in the kitchen and indistinct yelling.
I drop my coat and my briefcase right there in the foyer and stride toward the sounds.
My father stands in the middle of a disaster, arguing with a nurse about what he’ll eat. The nurse deals with him patiently and faintly pleading. This must have been going on for a while. A questionable splat of red on the wall is probably the remains of spaghetti sauce.
An onion is half chopped on the butcher block counter. A puddle of butter lounges in an empty skillet. Eggs roll, still complete in their shells, on the floor. Somehow they didn’t crack when they fell. A minor miracle.
My father loved to cook. I suppose that shouldn’t be in the past tense. He still loves to cook. And I would be happy to let him, if he could be trusted with knives and hot metal.
“Dad,” I say, coming to hold his shoulders. “What’s wrong?”
“She keeps giving me dinner. It’s breakfast time. I tried to tell her.”
We don’t argue with him about the time. It won’t convince him, and there’s no point. If he doesn’t want spaghetti, he doesn’t have to eat it. “What would you like to eat?”
“An omelet. I can make it. I can make it myself.” He tries to pull away, toward the half-chopped onion. “You have to tell that woman I can make an omelet, for God’s sake.”
Jennifer Brown has been one of his nurses for years. He can’t remember her name. Someday he won’t remember my name, either. She turns her back, wiping a perfectly clean counter from far away. She’s giving us privacy, but she’s also staying nearby in case I need help. For the most part I deal with my father when I’m home. Occasionally, if he fights long and hard, I have to stop him. It’s for his own safety.
“I can make you an omelet,” I say, my tone gentle.
