Chapter 17
Claire’s kitchen smelled like mole. Not like Senora Morales’s mole, but Nina’s mole.
Nina’s version, that she’d learned from the index cards and practiced over and over in her kitchen on Edisto until Elena tasted it and said, “It’s not David’s, it’s yours, and that’s better.
” That was the highest compliment Elena had ever given that didn’t involve criticizing someone’s haircut in the same sentence.
Nina had brought the ingredients in two grocery bags and taken them over to Claire’s kitchen.
And now she stood at the stove, toasting chilies on Claire’s comal, which Claire didn’t even own eleven months ago.
She had bought one after cooking class because some things, once they enter your life, just refuse to leave.
Harper was on chili soaking duty, which meant she was just standing at the counter with a bowl of hot water and a timer on her phone.
“The recipe says fifteen minutes,” she said. “It has been eleven. I will report when we reach fifteen.”
“You know the chilies don’t care a thing about your timer, Harper,” Nina said.
“The chilies are soaking in water. They are subject to the law of physics, just like everything else.”
“Senora Morales said the chilies are done when they’re done, not when a phone tells them to be.”
“Well, Senora Morales is a culinary genius, I will admit that, but I’m a woman with a spreadsheet and a timer, and we have to work with what we have.”
Claire was chopping tomatoes. She was not good at chopping tomatoes, and she knew this.
She mainly squished them instead of chopping them, but she didn’t care.
She’d been practicing that sentence in various forms for almost a year now.
She didn’t care. She just had to wait until she actually felt it.
She chopped the tomatoes unevenly, and they went into the roasting pan unevenly, but the mole would be no worse for it.
Tomorrow, they were all jumping out of an airplane.
The thought kept arriving uninvited, like a guest who shows up early and gets in your way the entire time you’re trying to prepare for a party. It just stood in the corner of every conversation, every laugh, every moment, waiting to be looked at and acknowledged.
Tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, the three of them were going to drive to a small airfield outside of Beaufort, climb into a perfectly good plane, ascend to 14,000 feet, and then voluntarily, like three nutcases, on purpose, step out of the good airplane.
Claire had not told Greg any of the specifics. She just told him they were doing their last adventure tomorrow, and she’d be home by the afternoon. At least she prayed she would be home by the afternoon.
He had asked, for the first time in their marriage, “Well, what is it?”
And she had said, “Skydiving.”
He looked at her with an expression she’d never seen on his face before. Fear.
It wasn’t a confused concern or anything that looked distant.
It wasn’t the man who had said “have fun” for six months without asking any questions.
She saw real fear, the fear of a man who had just realized that his wife was about to throw herself out of an airplane, and he was not ready to lose her.
“Be very careful,” he said.
He said it while holding her hands, which he hadn’t done in the kitchen since their anniversary fifteen years ago. His eyes were actually a little wet.
Claire understood that his way of saying “be careful” was Greg’s way of saying, I love you, and I’m scared, and I’m only understanding right now what it would mean to lose you.
She kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll be careful.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
It was the most honest exchange they’d had outside of the doctor’s office, and it had happened over a cutting board, which seemed right, because the best conversations in a home always happened in the kitchen.
The mole took three hours to cook, and those three hours were the best part.
It wasn’t the mole itself, although it was very good and rich and dark.
The whole house smelled like someone’s grandmother’s kitchen.
But the best part was the making of it. Nina at the stove, directing everyone.
Harper at the counter, grinding spices in the molcajete that Nina brought because Claire’s spice grinder, according to Nina, was “a machine designed to remove the soul from cumin.” Claire was roasting tomatillos under the broiler, watching the skins blister and char.
They talked while they cooked, but not about tomorrow, about everything else, about the whole year.
“Oh my gosh, do you remember the karaoke?” Claire said, laughing. “At Hank’s? I swear, Nina, you almost didn’t get out of the car.”
“I almost didn’t get out of the car for many of them,” Nina said. “That was kind of my thing back then.”
“Yeah, your thing was getting out of the car anyway,” Harper said. “That was the brave part. Not the adventure at first. It was the car door.”
Nina stirred the mole. The chocolate was now going in, two tablets, dark and grainy, dissolving into the sauce. This time, Nina’s hands weren’t shaking as they had been at Senora Morales’s house. Now she stirred with a steady rhythm of a woman who had made this recipe at least five times.
“Oh, and the polar plunge,” Nina said. “Claire, you screamed so loud a jogger stopped to make sure nobody was drowning.”
“Well, that water was thirty-seven degrees. I think screaming was completely appropriate.”
“And the matching bathing suits,” Harper said. “Navy with polka dots. I can’t believe you bought us matching bathing suits, Claire.”
“I told you they were on sale. It was a really good sale.”
“They were coordinated. You coordinated our polar plunge like we were triplets.”
“Well, someone has to maintain standards around here.”
Harper opened a bottle of wine while the mole simmered. She poured three glasses, and they moved to the kitchen table.
Claire’s phone was open to a folder of the photos from the past eleven months. They scrolled through them together, leaning in, their heads almost touching.
The karaoke stage at Hank’s, blurry and dark, their three shapes in the spotlight.
The polar plunge, taken by the jogger who had stopped to watch, the three of them in polka dots, waist-deep, mouths hanging open in shock.
Nina at Senora Morales’s stove, stirring, tears running down her face.
The tattoo parlor in Savannah, with Wren bent over Harper’s wrist.
The diner outside Hendersonville, three glasses of sweet tea and that big basket of biscuits.
The hotel room in Asheville, Claire on the pullout couch, sketching, while Nina smiled at the ceiling.
Their speed dating name tags, lined up in a row.
The grief retreat, a photo Nina had asked Claire to take of the rocking chairs on the porch.
Hank’s sign, Folly Beach at dawn, their wave tattoos.
Harper’s comedy face, mouth open, finger pointing at the audience.
Clementine the horse, her nose against Nina’s shoulder.
Claire’s painting on an easel, war paint on their faces.
Eleven months, eleven adventures, some of them not a big deal to other people, but very big deals to them. These three women, who had sat on a porch a year ago and admitted the truth, signed a napkin, and then just jumped.
“Who were we?” Harper said, scrolling back to the beginning.
There was a photo of them from the birthday dinner that Claire had taken at the table, with three of them raising their glasses. The difference in that photo and the ones that came after was so visible that it made Claire’s chest clench.
In the birthday photo, they were smiling. In the later photos, they were alive.
There was a real difference.
“We were so scared,” Nina said.
“I think we’re still scared,” Claire said. “I mean, we’re jumping out of an airplane tomorrow.”
“Yeah, but it’s a different kind of scared,” Nina said.
She was looking at the birthday photo of the woman who had been so different all those months ago, wearing David’s sweater like armor.
“Back then, I was just scared of living. Now I’m scared of an airplane.”
“I think that’s a legitimate fear.”
Harper laughed, then Claire, and then they were all laughing.
As Claire smelled the mole and looked at the photos, she thought, This is what a year of bravery looks like. It’s not a highlight reel. It’s a kitchen full of food and laughter, and the people who showed up over and over.
They ate at the table that Greg had cleared for them before he left for his brother’s house for the night.
He had cleared the table without being asked.
He’d moved his laptop, his earbuds, and the stack of mail that had been sitting there accumulating for the last week.
He’d put out the good plates, the ones Claire used for birthdays and Thanksgiving.
He’d even left a note on the counter that said, “Have fun tonight. I’ll be thinking about you tomorrow. Be brave. Love, G.”
Claire had read the note three times and then put it in the drawer with her sketchbooks. That’s where she kept things that mattered.
The mole was delicious, rich, dark, and smoky, layered in a way that felt like tasting the whole history of a country in a single spoonful. Nina served it over rice the way David did, and they ate at Claire’s table with those good plates and the wine.
“Elena would approve,” Harper said.
“No, Elena would say that this rice is overcooked,” Nina said.
“Is the rice overcooked?”
“Slightly. Don’t tell Elena.”
After dinner, they moved to the dining room with the wine. Claire had put blankets on the floor with pillows, creating what looked like a nest. It was comfortable and slightly absurd, but they sank into it and didn’t get up.
The napkin was on the coffee table. Claire had taken it off the fridge for the first time all year and put it next to the wine, next to some of the photos they’d printed at the drugstore that afternoon on an impulse.
It looked different from what it had been eleven months ago. The dusty rose had faded to a softer hue. The ink had blurred at the edges. Harper’s sharp handwriting was still legible.