Chapter 24 THE MISSING PIECE #2
Curiously, the way he added Lara’s name sounded like an afterthought.
I pretended to focus on sorting pieces, but I was wondering whether Noah was actually bothered by the way Finn and I had been hanging out.
He certainly hadn’t seemed impressed the night Finn and I had painted our toenails.
Or the following day at the beach soccer game.
But I had to spend some time with both brothers. We were living under the same roof!
I tried to be tactful. By throwing Lara under the bus. Sorry, Lara.
‘Lara’s approach to doing jigsaw puzzles is just tossing them in the trash,’ I said with a laugh.
‘The stress-free approach to things,’ said Rosie, who’d finished icing her cupcakes and was now starting to wash up. ‘Remember that 3D puzzle doodad you brought home from one of your college tours? I swear that took ten years off my life.’
Noah and I worked quietly at our puzzle, making fairly good headway.
That was due to him more than me, though: I was painfully aware of how closely we were seated.
Every time our legs or wrists brushed, a current of electricity zapped me.
Given its shenanigans earlier, I was surprised that the kitchen light didn’t short-circuit.
Josephine’s ring, however, was putting on quite a show. Enough that Noah noticed.
‘Do you need me to check the fuse on your ring as well?’ he asked drily.
I hid my hand under the table and continued to sort puzzle pieces. Mom, who was deep into a cider and therefore feeling confident about her puzzling skills, came by to help pick out some of the reds and greens. It didn’t take long before her phone started buzzing.
‘Ugh, what am I going to do about this client? Look, they’re emailing again! It’s practically stalking at this point. Maybe I should let Shauna win this one.’
‘That’ll never happen,’ I whispered to Noah.
‘I hate that you’re right, yet at the same time proud that you’re right.’ Mom sighed. ‘I’m going to need my laptop for this. You’re on your own, kids.’
Noah and I continued, quietly passing each other pieces and pressing others into place. We were making unhurried progress, and our puzzle was starting to show hints of an autumnal forest. My focus was on the couple at the bottom of the picture. Who were they? How had they chosen each other?
I hoped on some level that piecing them together would help reveal something to me about my own love life, but surely life wasn’t as simple as that.
From the music room, I could hear Finn teasing out the ballad he’d played at the Summerween concert. The night he’d played seemingly just for me.
‘I know that one,’ I called, my tongue loosened by drink.
Next to me, Noah said nothing, but I could feel his energy shift. Especially when Finn came loping back into the room, pulling up a chair at the table. He sifted through a stack of pieces, grimacing as he held up two identical-looking bits of forest.
‘C’mon, Molly,’ groaned Finn. ‘It’s been hours. By the time you get done, movies won’t exist any more. You’d better hurry – there’s a bag of microwave popcorn with your name on it.’
I glanced at the kitchen clock. Wow, he was right. Noah and I had been working at the jigsaw for the better part of the evening. Where had the time gone?
‘You’re welcome to join in,’ said Noah, his tone measured. Although there was an undercurrent of something there I couldn’t put my finger on.
Finn sipped at the remnants of my cider. ‘This thing has like a million pieces, and they all look the same. Who picks out a jigsaw puzzle that’s all leaves? It’s sadistic.’
‘It’s challenging,’ countered Noah. ‘The whole point of a jigsaw puzzle is that it requires you to sit and concentrate on a project for an extended period of time.’
‘Like a painting,’ added Rosie, coming over. ‘Ooh, there’s a sky piece.’
She popped it into place, then patted Finn on the shoulder. He looked like he wanted to respond with one of his witty comebacks, but thought better of it. And probably a good thing, too. Poor Rosie had enough on her plate.
‘Another cider?’ offered Noah, seeing that Finn had emptied my glass. He stood to gather them from the fridge, something he always did manually and Finn always did using magic.
‘Cider me up,’ Finn and I said, simultaneously. It was a running joke from years back, and we both dissolved into laughter. Finn giggled so much that he slid under the table, where he remained until Noah passed him his drink.
‘At least he can’t mess up our puzzle from under there.’ Noah sipped his cider as he started making a frame from the edge pieces.
‘Couple pieces,’ I added, gathering a few that belonged to the jacket-clad couple at the bottom of the image.
Finn scrolled his phone as Noah and I worked, texting me silly videos of guinea pigs wearing animated party hats every few minutes.
‘Stop it,’ I said, laughing, as my phone vibrated and a guinea pig danced across my screen.
‘I’m going to keep doing it until you agree that it’s movie-watching time.’
‘Once we’re done with this,’ I promised. ‘Or at least once we get some more of the edges done. Or even a chunk, like that crooked tree. How about you pick the music? Unless you’re listening to something, Rosie?’
‘It’s all yours, hon,’ she said. ‘Amelia and I are going to take our party outside. If I can entice her back out of the office, anyway.’
Finn connected his phone to the Bluetooth speaker, grimacing as it somehow picked up an AM talkback station, and then what sounded like a whisperwind.
He fiddled with the temperamental speaker while Noah and I worked methodically through our respective sections, passing pieces that seemed like a good fit for the other.
Every time, the skin contact was electric.
And yet, I was painfully aware of Finn watching.
‘Urgh,’ I said, as two pieces I was certain went together refused to combine. ‘It’s so frustrating when that happens. These definitely go, right?’
I set them down on the table to demonstrate. Still unconvinced that I was wrong, I rotated the pieces, frowning as they refused to fit together.
I hissed in frustration.
‘Here,’ said Finn. He snapped his fingers, and his magic gathered the remaining puzzle pieces, sorting them and then setting them into place. The entire puzzle spread out before us, gleaming under the soft kitchen lights. All stretched out like that, it was so regal and impressive.
And yet I felt cheated. Noah and I had worked so hard, and we’d been making such great progress. All right, so realistically we’d still had days of work ahead of us, but that didn’t sound so bad to me.
‘Come on,’ I said, trying to keep the frustration from my voice. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘Because he can’t handle it when something’s not about him,’ said Noah. He ran his hand through his hair, although from the violence of the gesture it looked like he’d rather use his hand to smack Finn across the face. ‘You know what, I’m out.’
‘I didn’t totally solve it,’ said Finn.
And he was right: a single piece was missing, right where the faces of the couple should’ve been.