Chapter 5
Making Pasta
Melissa
The afternoon light filtered through the tall windows of the committee room in the Oregon State Capitol building, catching the dust motes suspended in the air.
Melissa had spent countless hours in rooms like this over the past several years, but today she found herself distracted, her attention drifting during a recess that had already stretched fifteen minutes too long.
She stood near the windows, coffee cup in hand, watching the other legislators cluster in their usual groups.
Democrats by the water cooler, Republicans near the door, the handful of independents scattered between like children unsure which lunch table to join.
The infrastructure bill was on the agenda for next week’s session, and she should have been working the room, shoring up support, counting votes.
Instead, she was watching Catherine Aldridge laugh at something Senator Morrison had said.
Catherine was sixty-three now, her silver hair cropped short in a style that suited her sharp features.
She’d been Melissa’s first mentor in Salem—had taken a young, ambitious aide under her wing and taught her how to navigate the treacherous waters of state politics.
How to count votes. How to build coalitions.
How to smile at people you despised and make them think you meant it.
Melissa remembered those early years with a clarity that surprised her.
Late nights in Catherine’s office, poring over policy briefs while Catherine explained the subtleties of legislative language.
The way Catherine’s approval had felt like sunlight after a long winter.
The way Melissa had caught herself watching Catherine’s hands as she marked up documents, elegant and sure, and wondering what it would feel like to—
To what?
She’d never finished that thought. Had never let herself finish it.
She’d filed it all under admiration, under wanting to be like her, under the natural intensity of a mentorship that had shaped her entire career.
Catherine had been brilliant and commanding and everything Melissa wanted to become.
Of course she’d been fascinated by her. Of course she’d hung on her every word.
That was all it had been. All it could have been.
Catherine glanced across the room, and for a moment their eyes met. She smiled—polite, distant, the smile of a colleague rather than a mentor—and tightness twisted in Melissa’s chest that she refused to examine.
“Senator Brandt?” Her aide David appeared at her elbow, tablet in hand. “The recess is almost over. Did you want to speak with Senator Webb about the broadband amendment before we reconvene?”
“Yes. Of course.” Melissa set down her coffee cup and smoothed her blazer, pushing the memories back into whatever box they’d escaped from. She didn’t have time for this. She had a bill to pass, a career to maintain, a daughter waiting at home.
Home.
The word felt different lately. Warmer, somehow. Less like a place she slept between obligations and more like somewhere she actually wanted to be.
She pushed that thought aside too, and went to find Senator Webb.
By the time Melissa pulled into the driveway of her home, her head was pounding. It was still warm, the summer heat making the asphalt beneath her shoes warm. Bumblebees hummed among the flowers, and the neighbor’s cat lay on their porch, soaking up the evening sun.
The past five days had fallen into a new pattern.
As always, Melissa left early, came home late, but when she entered the house, she found evidence of June’s presence scattered throughout the house like breadcrumbs.
Fresh flowers on the kitchen table. Lila’s drawings taped to the previously clean refrigerator.
The lingering scent of whatever June had cooked for dinner, kept warm in the oven for Melissa’s eventual return.
She’d eaten three of those dinners alone at the kitchen island, reading briefings on her laptop while the house slept around her. June always left a plate covered in foil together with a small note: Chicken and vegetables. Microwave 2 min. — J.
Tonight, though, she wasn’t as late home, and Lila would still be awake. Movement in the kitchen windows told her where they were.
When Melissa came through the door, she heard something she hadn’t heard at home in a long time.
Laughter.
She followed the sound down the hallway, stopping in the kitchen doorway to take in the scene before her.
The island was covered in flour. Not a light dusting, but actual drifts of it, white powder spreading across the marble like fresh snow.
Lila stood at the center of the chaos on a step stool, her dark hair streaked with flour, her hands buried in a mound of pale dough.
She was grinning—not her polite, careful smile, but a real grin that transformed her whole face and which Melissa had forgotten about.
How long had it been since her daughter smiled like that?
Before the divorce, for sure.
June stood beside her, equally flour-covered, guiding Lila’s hands as they shaped the dough.
“Mom!” Lila looked up, and for once she didn’t smooth her expression into composure. “You’re home! Miss Hollis is teaching me to make pasta!”
“I can see that.” Melissa stepped into the kitchen, careful to avoid the dustings of flour that had migrated to the floor. “What kind of pasta?”
“Whatever kind we want! Miss Hollis says you can make any shape if you know how to roll the dough right. I made otters. See?” Lila held up a misshapen lump that bore only the vaguest resemblance to an otter.
But she was so proud of it, so delighted with her creation, that Melissa’s throat tightened.
“They’re beautiful, sweetheart.”
“This one is the mama otter, and this one is the baby, and they’re holding hands so they don’t drift apart.” Lila arranged the lumps on a flour-dusted cutting board with great care.
“I think otter pasta is a new thing,” June said.
“We could probably market it.” Her voice was light, easy, but Melissa caught her watching—assessing, maybe, trying to read Melissa’s reaction to the flour-covered chaos of her usually pristine kitchen.
“I hope you don’t mind the mess. We got a little carried away, but I’ll clean up when we’re done. ”
“It’s fine.” Melissa set her bag on a chair, watching Lila work. The girl’s movements were confident, different from the careful child who had colored quietly in corners while Melissa worked the room at political events. “I didn’t know we had ingredients for fresh pasta.”
“It’s just flour, eggs, olive oil and salt, so even this kitchen had it,” June said, then backtracked as she realized she’d sort of insulted Melissa. “I mean, those are really basic things—”
“I do realize that I don’t keep the most well-stocked kitchen,” Melissa said drily. “Cooking has never been my forte.”
It had been one of many things Michael had been fond of criticizing.
June grinned briefly. “Well, we had to do some shopping. Fresh basil for the sauce. Lila’s becoming quite the shopping companion.” June wiped her floury hands on her apron. “The sauce is almost ready. Just tomato and basil. We can eat in about twenty minutes, if you’re hungry.”
Melissa was hungry. She’d skipped lunch again, surviving on coffee and willpower, and the smell of tomatoes and garlic was making her stomach clench.
“I should change first,” she said. “Get out of these clothes.”
“Take your time. We’ve got everything under control here.” June smiled, and there was flour on her cheek, a white smudge against the warm flush of her skin. “Right, Lila?”
“Right! Mom, you should wash your hands really well before dinner. Miss Hollis says clean hands are the most important thing in cooking.”
“I will.”
Melissa retreated upstairs, trading her blazer and silk blouse for soft pants and an old cardigan. Her reflection in the bathroom mirror looked tired—lines around her eyes, tension in her jaw—but despite the exhaustion, she found herself looking forward to returning downstairs.
When she came back to the kitchen, Lila was carefully lowering her otter-shaped pasta into a pot of boiling water, supervised by June. The kitchen was still a disaster, but it was somehow… okay. Instead of a showroom, it looked like someone lived there.
Find someone good. Someone warm.
She hadn’t meant to hire someone who’d upend her home, but at the same time, perhaps she had.
This was what Rachel had told her, and Melissa could’ve chosen one of the cold nannies from the nanny company…
yet she’d gone for the fresh-faced culinary-school graduate with babysitting experience from her teens but no more advanced credentials than that.
Dinner was louder than usual. Lila chattered about the pasta-making process, about the grocery store trip, about a book on ocean mammals that June had checked out from the library for her.
The otter-shaped pasta had lost most of its form in the boiling water, but Lila ate it with fierce pride, pointing out which misshapen lumps had been which animal.
“This one was supposed to be a seal, but it turned into a blob. Miss Hollis says that’s okay because all pasta tastes the same anyway.”
“That’s very philosophical,” Melissa said.
“What does philosophical mean?”
Melissa pondered how to explain it to a child. “It means… thoughtful about the way things work.”
Lila considered this. “Miss Hollis is philosophical, then. She knows lots of things.”
“I know a few things,” June corrected. “Mostly about food.”
“You know lots of things about animals too,” Lila said.
June glanced at Melissa, then smiled at Lila. “Had to pick a few things up when I was babysitting. You’re not the only kid who loves animals, and weird animal facts keep kids busy.” She leaned closer to Lila and winked. “But I’ve picked up a lot of new facts from a very reliable source.”
Lila beamed at the acknowledgment.