Chapter 22
Audrey
The candles won't die, and Sophie has given up trying.
She sits at the head of the table with her arms crossed, watching the trick flames flare back to life after every breath while the rest of the room erupts around her.
Eli bounces on a chair. Two girls from her class shriek every time the fire comes back.
Owen doesn’t react, eyes on Sophie instead of the cake.
She waits them out. Then she leans in, unhurried, licking two fingers and pinching each flame, one at a time, like she's working through a chore.
"They're trick candles," she tells the room. "Mom got them on purpose."
Owen laughs a beat too long at a joke she didn't make. She doesn't look at him.
I cut the cake.
It's a good one. Three layers, brown butter and vanilla bean, the buttercream tinted the exact lavender Sophie’s been begging me to paint her bedroom. The shade of her favorite Taylor Smith album. I caught her twice with the fridge open, staring at the cake before the party.
Owen elbows Eli and points out the corner pieces with the most frosting. He slides one over to Sophie, seeing if she wants it. She takes it without looking up, and he watches her eat it like he pulled off something.
"You should charge for these," Nate says, halfway through his slice. “This is the best cake I’ve ever had."
"You say that every time you eat one of my cakes, Nate." I hand him a napkin.
Nora walks over and steals some frosting off the inside of the platter with her fingers. "I didn’t think you’d actually use the trick candles I bought. You know how Sophie is."
"I thought about it." I rinse the cake knife in the sink. “She already acts like a teenager though. She shouldn’t be so serious all the time.”
"Oh, Auds." She bumps my shoulder. "How is our girl in the double digits already?”
My phone buzzes against the counter. I almost leave it. Then I see the name and something in me goes quiet and careful all at once.
“Be right back.”
I wipe my hands on a dish towel and slip into the laundry room off the kitchen, where the dryer is still ticking out its last heat and the party noise drops in half.
There’s a text from Declan I’ve left unread since this morning. The most recent text, however, is the reason I’m holding my breath. I open the message.
Marcy: Cast list is up, but I wanted you to hear it from me first. You're our Eve. First read-through Tuesday at seven. I had a good feeling the second you raised your hand. Welcome to the cast, Audrey.
I read it twice.
Eve.
I actually got it, one of the main leads. The garden, the apple, the very beginning before everything goes wrong.
I press my fingertips to my mouth. A laugh tangles up with something else, turning into a strangled sound I don't let past my fingers. The dryer ticks. Past the door, somebody's knocked over a cup, and Eli announces it like a dam broke.
I stand there a second longer than I need to, soaking in the moment. Then I fix my face, go back out, and tell no one. Not yet. I want to keep it tucked inside me for a while, just mine.
Eventually, parents arrive in a staggered line.
There's a flurry of shoes and goodie bags, a brief crisis involving a tooth that was forgotten on the table outside. Nate folds the table back into the garage, Nora following with the folding chairs, insisting I shouldn’t lift a finger while they’re here.
When they leave, Owen drags his feet at the door, glancing back at Sophie, who's already turned away.
Nora hooks her purse over her shoulder. "I’ve missed you. We don’t see each other enough anymore.”
"You’re busy with Nate and Owen. I’m busy with the kids. We’re making the most of the time, Nor.”
I don’t tell her the real reason I haven’t invited her over as often. And luckily, the kids were too busy with their friends to think of bringing him up.
Nora pulls me into a hug and holds it too long and too tight, the way she's been doing lately, like she's waiting for me to break down and beg her to stay.
Then she's down the steps, taillights swinging out of the driveway.
The house settles into the particular hush that comes after a lot of people leave it.
I pick up my phone and start typing.
All clear. They're gone.
The reply lands before I've set it down.
Ten minutes out.
Ten minutes, which means he's been sitting in a parking lot somewhere off the highway between Harlow and here, killing time so he doesn't pull in while other cars are still in the drive.
I wipe frosting off the counter. Sophie's on the living room floor, stacking her cards in some order only she understands while Eli sorts party loot beside her. I'm rinsing the cake platter when the knock comes. The doorbell app he installed on my phone shows me who it is.
“Can you grab that, Soph?”
She’s up before I finish the sentence.
She unlocks the top latch, opens the door, and her shoulders give a little when she sees him, the cool slipping for just a second.
"Hey, kid." Asher fills the frame, sunset behind him, an envelope in one hand. "Big day."
"You came." She says it like she wasn't sure, and the bottom drops out of me a little. Because she should be sure.
"Wouldn't miss it." He toes his shoes off by the mat, holding the envelope out flat on both palms. "Happy birthday. Sorry I'm late."
He's not sorry he's late. He's sorry he had to be.
Sophie takes it and opens it the way she does everything now—careful, controlled—peeling the flap instead of tearing it.
Eli abandons the loot pile and crowds her shoulder.
She opens the card, something undoubtedly cheesy I can tell even from this distance, and pulls out three glossy rectangles. She goes very still.
Then she screams.
It comes up out of her with the lid all the way off, the composure gone in an instant, and she's jumping, both feet, the papers crushed to her chest. Eli tries looking into her arm, confused since he’s normally the one screaming, and the house that was quiet ninety seconds ago is full again, full of my daughter being ten years old out loud.
I grip the edge of the counter and let it go through me.
“Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!” Her voice climbs out of its register. “Mom!”
"What is it, baby?"
She turns them around so I can see. Her hands aren't steady. Three VIP tickets to a Taylor Smith concert. In Varden.
Asher's watching her. His jaw works once, like he's swallowing something.
"Wow." I find my voice. "Go put those somewhere you won't lose them. Both of you. Let me talk to Asher for a second."
Sophie's already moving, tickets pressed flat to her chest, Eli at her heels, the two of them arguing about merchandise before they’re up the stairs and in her room.
He joins me in the kitchen.
I wait for the click of her door.
"Asher." I keep it low. "This is too much."
He leans back against the counter and crosses his ankles. "It's a birthday present."
"It's floor tickets. In Varden. I know what those cost because she's been quoting resale prices at me for a month like it's a part-time job. And Nora ended up finding cheaper ones for herself somewhere else.”
"So I saved her the markup."
"Asher."
He looks at me then, and the ease slides off his face. What's left is quiet. "Let me spoil my girls, Audrey." He scrunches his face. "And Eli too. If he wants to go. Or she can invite a friend, and I can watch him."
Girls.
He holds my eyes, ankles crossed, in a kitchen he had to wait off a highway exit to walk into.
My throat goes tight.
"Thank you," I get out, rough.
He pushes off the counter and crosses to me. He doesn't kiss me. We don't, not down here, not with the kids fifteen feet away. I'm still figuring out how to do this. He stops close, tucking a loose piece of hair behind my ear with one finger, slow.
Then he lifts one of my hands and turns it, putting his warm mouth on the inside of my wrist.
"You've got frosting on you," he says, licking the spot this time.
My pulse starts tripping over itself. The sensation from his tongue makes my knees start to give out.
“You always find something,” I barely get out.
The corner of his mouth tips. Upstairs, Sophie's door bangs open, and Eli's voice spills out. We both step back at the same time, easy, practiced, and I hate exactly how practiced we've gotten at it.