Chapter 2
At home, Summer found the tape measure beneath three packets of birthday candles. Jonah used it to check the kitchen, and within a minute they knew the table she liked would leave room to get past. She left the website open on her phone, waiting for him to look at it again.
On the walk home, Jonah had told her more about Kylie’s return.
She’d finished her thesis and her graduate program in Florence had finished earlier than expected; there was a museum in Boston where she might be working, though Jonah hadn’t been sure whether that was settled.
Summer had asked if she was coming back for good, and he had said he hoped so.
Summer had followed him into the street to get around a tour group.
By the time they reached the house, she had more questions.
It ought to have been good news. Kylie had been Jonah’s friend since they were children, and Summer had known before their second date that Kylie and Jonah had also been together for a time.
What she knew less clearly was how something lasting so many years had become the uncomplicated friendship he appeared to have now.
“You still together when she left?” Summer asked. She kept her eyes on the tape measure. “Will it be weird for you seeing her again?”
Jonah stopped with his thumb against the catch. “We broke up before she went,” he said. “She wanted to go on her own.”
“For the two years?” Summer asked. “Was it one of those things where you were going to see how you felt when she came back?”
“No, we broke up.” He set the tape down. “She wanted to find out who she was without any strings attached. She was fairly clear that included me.”
Summer turned the tape measure over. “Did you want that?” she asked. She touched a scorch mark on the table. “To break up?”
“No,” Jonah said. “We’d split up once before. But I wasn’t going to spend another year trying to talk her into wanting me.”
Summer glanced at him. When had he stopped wanting Kylie? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer. She changed the question. “Would your grandmother mind if we replace it?”
“She’s been dead for six years. I think we’re safe.” He put the tape away, then looked at her again when she didn’t laugh. “She bought it secondhand when she moved into her apartment. It wasn’t some great family treasure.”
“Your mother might want it,” she said. “We shouldn’t get rid of it without asking her.”
He glanced at the clock above the door. “Are you hungry enough for dinner, or did half a sandwich at six destroy your appetite for the evening?”
They made eggs because neither of them wanted to go out again.
Summer stood at the stove while Jonah cut leftover bread from her bakery, sawing the last slice so crookedly that he turned it over before putting it on his plate.
She had almost asked him to let her do it.
Instead she gave him the egg with the broken yolk, which he preferred, and carried her plate to the table.
“What does Kylie eat?” she asked as he sat down. “If she’s been living in Italy, I’m guessing she’s going to have opinions about pasta.”
“Anything. Why?” Jonah reached for the pepper, then paused with it above his plate. “Are you thinking of having her over?”
“Unless you wanted to keep her in the garden.” Summer cut through the white of her egg, trying to make the invitation sound less deliberate than it was. “Tuesday’s not too bad for me. I could leave Macy to close.”
“You don’t have to do that.” He smiled and reached across for the bread. “She can eat with her mother. I wasn’t expecting you to entertain her the day she gets back.”
“I’m offering dinner, Jonah. She won’t need a program.” She tasted her egg and reached for the salt. “It would be nice to meet her properly. I’ve heard so much about her that I’m starting to feel rude.”
He laughed. “She’ll like you,” he said. “She keeps asking when we can hang out.”
“She could have called me,” Summer said. “I wouldn’t have minded. We’re both on our phones enough.”
“It would have been a little weird though, right? Since you’ve never met before.
I thought I’d find a time for us all to talk together, and the timing never worked.
Usually when she called, you were here and I was out, or the other way around.
” He frowned a little, as if trying to recall a specific occasion.
“There was that Sunday in June, but you’d fallen asleep. I wasn’t going to wake you.”
Summer remembered very little about the Sundays in June.
She had been able to sleep in the afternoon then, deeply and without warning, although at night she would lie awake resenting the fact that her body couldn’t seem to do one ordinary thing at the proper time.
She put down her knife and reached for her water. “Did she know why?”
Jonah stopped cutting his toast. “About the baby?” he asked, and she nodded, wishing he had understood without making her hear the word. “Yes. I told her.”
She took a sip to hide her expression, though she hadn’t wanted the water. Her own mother knew, and Macy knew because somebody had needed to open the bakery. Still, she had not pictured Kylie in Italy hearing about Summer while Summer slept on the sofa with an old towel folded beneath her.
“When?” she asked. She could have let it go, but then she would have had to sit through dinner on Tuesday wondering what sort of expression to make if Kylie mentioned it.
“A few days afterward. She’d sent me something for the baby, and she was asking how things were going.” He looked toward the sink, then back at her. “I didn’t want her to keep asking.”
Summer had not seen a parcel. She tried to remember one anyway, searching the blurred accumulation of flowers and dishes people wanted returned until she realized Jonah was watching her attempt it. “Where is it?” she asked. “Whatever she sent.”
“Upstairs, in the little room,” he said. “It came while you were at your mother’s. I didn’t open it.”
She looked down at the yellow yolk cooling on her toast. The little room had become the place for things they were not ready to make decisions about, including two unopened wedding presents and a bag of clothes Summer had stopped wearing in May.
She went in to use the ironing board. She never looked in the cupboard, which apparently contained something else she had not thanked anyone for.
“You could have told me,” Summer said. He began gathering their plates, although she hadn’t finished eating, and she put a hand over hers. “I wouldn’t have had to open it.”
“You were having a good day. I didn’t want to hand you a box of baby things.” He waited, then added, “After that I couldn’t find a time that seemed better.”
Summer looked toward the stairs. “Leave it there for now,” she said, and Jonah nodded.
“Please don’t tell her to be careful with me on Tuesday,” she said. Jonah had put down his fork and was watching her. “I don’t want somebody watching me to see whether I can bear a conversation.”
“All right.” He pushed his plate aside, leaving half his egg. “I won’t.”
Summer ate another bite of hers. She couldn’t swallow it, and laid down her fork.
He left his phone on the windowsill when he went to fill the sink.
Summer stayed at the table, listening to the water run.
Tuesday would be easier if she knew what was in the parcel.
She could ask him to bring it down now, have it over with before Kylie arrived; instead she watched the steam rise around his hands.
“Six-thirty,” she said as he turned off the tap. “Tell her six-thirty, and ask if there’s anything she doesn’t eat.” She drew his abandoned plate toward her before he could reach it, collecting the toast crusts onto hers, and he bent to kiss the top of her head on his way back to the sink.