Chapter 13 Marisa
MARISA
I wake to the sound of a house keeping its promises.
Heat moves in the vents.
Old timber stretches like a cat and settles again. Somewhere down the hall a kettle begins a slow complaint that will turn into song.
I am warm under a quilt that smells like cedar and one of Cruz’s cotton shirts.
For three seconds I do not know where I am.
Then the rhythm of two small breaths threads through awareness and my body remembers how to be a mother before the rest of me opens its eyes.
There’s a concerned text from Lidia, more than a few missed calls from Nico, and one particularly nasty message about the boys that makes my fists clench.
It takes me a few breaths to stabilize myself, but then I remember I am somewhere safe although it has taken me the longest time to realize it.
The twins doze in the room across the hall.
The door is ajar, a strip of pale winter light laid across the floorboards.
After sending a quick text to Lidia apologizing about the missed check-in and Subaru and promising I’m safe, I slide out of bed and pull on wool socks, tug Cruz’s flannel over my tank top, and sweep my hair up with the fork I found on the nightstand. It should look ridiculous. It feels like armor.
I move quietly, the way you learn to move when sleep is a precious animal you do not want to scare.
Luca has claimed Deacon’s old crib, the one with the smooth rails Cruz sanded last night until the wood shone like bread right before the glaze.
Gabe is in Isla’s crib, pleased with its history, stomach up, hands open like a prince that owns the sun.
I touch each soft brow with two fingers.
Both boys are warm.
Both boys smell like formula and clean cotton.
My ribs ache with how right they look in this room and how wrong I have felt for months.
The lodge kitchen calls like it did the first time I stepped into it, when the storm made everyone damp and beautiful and strange.
The chalkboard still has Ravenwell note on it, and someone has added extra lines under it.
Deacon, probably.
His underlines always look like they could hold a roof.
I tuck the flannel tighter and start the morning the only way I know how.
I set up the polenta because polenta, done right, teaches patience and forgiveness at the same time.
Stone-milled cornmeal into a pot.
Water, a pinch of salt, rosemary stripped with my thumbnail, a clove of garlic smashed until it remembers to be kind.
The first few minutes require attention so it does not think about clumping. After that, it becomes a meditation.
Stir, scrape, stir again. The wooden spoon finds its own path.
Coffee next.
The machine waits on the counter like a dog that knows every trick.
I consider the cold brew jar and leave it where it is, because Roman hates it on principle, and because Deacon will enjoy the performance later.
I pour water through grounds that smell like New York in December and pour myself a small cup of the real thing, since I expect to be judged by a man with storm eyes and a list of rules carved into wood.
The first sip is a small mercy. I hold it in my mouth and let my shoulders drop.
Apple cider goes into a pot with a studded orange, barky cinnamon, two cloves, and star anise for drama.
Heat unlocks the perfume and the whole kitchen begins to smell like sugar and firewood and a Christmas market.
I keep the flame low so it never boils off what makes it worth drinking.
I shape biscotti while the polenta goes gold and thick. Almonds toasted last night in the ancient oven.
Anise seeds crushed with the heel of my hand. Eggs beaten with sugar until the mixture lightens the way a mood does when someone who loves you walks into the room.
The dough is sticky and perfect. I roll it into two logs and pat them into obedience.
I could cry from the relief of a recipe that behaves.
The house is quieter than this many hearts should allow.
I am grateful for it, but I do not trust it.
I hum to make it my own, an old Dean Martin tune that kept me sane in kitchens where chefs threw pans and yelled about the salt like it was personal.
The polenta thickens to the exact resistance my nonna taught me to feel with a spoon, so I finish it with butter and a handful of Parmesan and a secret spoonful of mascarpone, because life is already hard enough.
My hands reach for familiar places without me.
Behind the flour tins, my old kitchen knife waits, wrapped in a tea towel I folded last year.
I unwrap it and touch the spine with my thumb. It sits in my palm like a question that already knows the answer.
I set it down and tell it to be useful. It listens.
I check the pantry for sugar and find the grocery list from last year still wedged under the magnet shaped like a rooster.
My handwriting, smudged but legible.
Oranges, cream, yeast, patience.
I trace the word patience with my fingertip and realize I wrote it twice, then laugh because I am not subtle when I need to remind myself to be decent.
A coffee mug sits sideways in the dish rack, lip tilted in a way no one would leave it.
Not mine.
Not one I recognize.
There is a faint half moon of mud near the back door, not a full footprint, nothing obvious, just the suggestion of someone who forgot to wipe their boots.
The hair along my neck goes electric for a breath.
I look at the door latch.
It looks back at me like it did its job.
I decide to be rational.
I decide to be a person who puts polenta on plates and not a person who invents ghosts.
Roman passes through.
He does not stop.
He takes in the room the way a man does when he could fix anything that breaks and also knows he cannot fix what is bleeding under his ribs.
He nods once.
His eyes are tired and hard and very dark.
He takes a small cup of espresso as if the machine did it for him out of respect and drinks it in one neat swallow.
He looks at the cold brew jar like it personally offended someone he loved and lets it live, which is almost funny.
He says nothing.
His hand finds the back of one of the kitchen chairs and rests there for a moment longer than necessary.
Then he goes toward the mudroom like a question walking on two legs.
Cruz is upstairs.
I can hear a low voice and a laugh from a phone on speaker and it belongs to a woman who has done this before.
Cara, he said.
A friend who knows babies and loved Isla when Isla was small and Cruz was trying to do everything right with diction and a bib.
I smile.
I cannot help it.
Even when the men are tight with secrets, they keep their promises where it counts.
Deacon has not come in from the barn, which means he is on the roof or crawling along the eaves pretending to repair what he decided might fail in a storm.
If I go looking, he will tell me it is fine.
He will say he is simply moving water in a better direction.
He will have a screwdriver behind his ear and snow in his beard and his eyes will flick past my shoulder toward the line of sight to the pantry door and I will not like that.
I put polenta on plates, one big dish for the table, one small bowl for me to taste.
I drizzle it with peppered olive oil and set crisp bacon on a tray because I am not here to watch anyone pretend they do not want fat and salt when they are scared.
I pour a small glass of cider and let the steam kiss my face.
I cut the biscotti logs and lay them on their sides for the second bake.
The knife slides clean.
The almond crumb smiles.
I am not superstitious, but I take what I can get.
Footsteps come down the hall.
Cruz appears first, soft shirt and warm smile and the kind of face that makes a person hand over a baby without reading the clipboard.
He sets a hand on the door frame like he is telling the wood to keep doing its best and then crosses the kitchen to kiss my cheek.
It is a brief, not at all complicated kiss.
It makes my eyes burn anyway.
“Morning, chef,” he says. “Smells like a person who knows the difference between comfort and an apology.”
“I am cooking so I do not climb the walls,” I say, lines of my mouth trying to decide if they want to be brave or mean. “You look like someone who slept three hours and could take on God with a spatula.”
He laughs under his breath, takes a spoon, tastes the polenta, and closes his eyes for a second so he can mean the pleasure.
“Brava,” he says. “Cara sends her love. She will come when the roads stop being dramatic. She told me to tell you to nap when the babies nap. Then she said you would not listen and to tell me to tell you again and although this advice is the biggest cliche in the book, if you’re light on work, use it. ”
“She is right though,” I say. “I am terrible at surrender.”
He lifts a brow, still smiling. “We can coach.”
Roman returns while Cruz is filling mugs with cider.
He has a dusting of snow in his hair, which is illegal and unfair and makes my stomach go hot for reasons I would rather keep to myself.
He glances at the polenta like he is checking a gauge and nods.
Deacon follows behind him, shaking out a set of gloves that have suffered nobly.
His eyes find mine, then flick to the back door for a fraction of a beat.
There it is again.
The something they are not saying.
“Eat,” I say, and try to make it sound normal. “Before it sets up like concrete and you have to act grateful.”
Deacon obeys with suspicious speed.
He sets a plate down, and the way he sits makes me think he has been talking too long about something that matters and decided food will keep him from saying more.
Roman eats standing, fork in hand, attention swinging between the window and the stove and me. He sees everything. He is not saying anything.
Cruz tells a story about Isla trying to convince Mae’s beagle to wear a scarf. We laugh at the right places.
We chew.
The biscuit scents deepen behind us. It is almost fine.
Except it is not.
The room has a fault line no one mentions.
No one meets my eyes directly for more than a breath.
Cruz overpraises the polenta like a man who wants to carry a different subject in his mouth.
Deacon drinks his cider like wine and says it is excellent with the decision of a man who is putting markers down for later.
Roman’s silence speaks three languages at once and none of them can translate what is wrong into a sentence I can take apart with a knife.
“What did I miss,” I ask finally, because pretending to be simple is not my gift. “Is the roof mad at you? Did the generator say something impolite? Did the chickens unionize? I can tell there is a meeting I did not attend.”
Cruz opens his mouth and closes it.
He reaches for my hand then lets it fall back to the table and puts it to work straightening a napkin instead.
Deacon clears his throat and says something about a camera freezing that is so unimportant his voice transforms it into an altar.
Roman looks directly at me, just for a second, then past me to the pantry, which is a worse answer than anything he could have delivered with words.
“Okay,” I say.
My throat tightens. I swallow it down with cider that suddenly tastes like it was poured two days ago.
I stack plates I do not need to stack.
I rinse a mug that is not dirty.
I smile at Cruz like I am not trying to shake information out of his kind face.
He squeezes my shoulder in a way that says he is sorry for secrets he did not choose.
Deacon stands too fast and says he should check the line by the south eave, which is a sentence he uses when he is leaving the room so no one has to watch him think.
Roman takes his cup and his quiet and sets both at the sink.
I am not a woman who enjoys being left out.
I am also not a woman who needs to be told twice when someone is trying not to alarm a mother who has had a bad few months.
I put the biscotti back in for the second bake. I turn the polenta pot down to low to keep it friendly.
I take my mug and walk toward the pantry for sugar because affection and adrenaline both require cookies later.
The pantry is cool and smells like cold stone and lemon oil.
The stollen sleeps on the top shelf under a tented red towel, dignified even at rest.
I try not to look directly at it because I am not ready for hope, not yet, even if Deacon’s block letters on the chalkboard made something that had been clenched in my chest sit down and drink water.
The cinnamon sticks are in a glass jar with a blue lid.
I take it down.
It is heavier than it should be.
At first I think someone double-stocked it, which would be a kindness because Cruz and Isla are both menaces with cinnamon.
I twist the lid.
It sticks. It gives.
The scent rushes out, warm and wild. Thin paper edges itself up between the sticks.
Paper does not belong here.
I set the jar on the shelf and lift out the paper with two fingers, careful not to scatter cinnamon onto the floor.
It is folded tight.
Someone took care.
The air goes thin in my ears.
I hear the stove tick.
Cruz laughs softly at something upstairs through the open stairwell.
Snow taps the window.
My hand is steady. My stomach is not.
I unfold it. The ink bites the page in a hand I do not know.
Four words.
Not artful. Not brave. Not complicated.
You should have stayed gone.
My breath leaves like someone opened a door.
The pantry tilts and rights itself. I stand there with sugar behind me and spice in my hand, and the old part of me that learned how to smile when people say cruel things almost smiles out of habit. I do not let it.
I refold the paper and keep my eyes open because the room is not allowed to change shape while I am in it.
I look up reflexively, through the pantry door, through the kitchen, toward the back door I thought had done its job, and for the first time since I woke I understand what their faces had been hiding.