Chapter 17
MADELEINE
Drew had made pasta.
This was ambitious. Madeleine knew it was ambitious because she could see the evidence of ambition all over the kitchen: flour on the counter, flour on the floor, flour on Drew's forearms, in his hair and on the front of the T-shirt he was wearing, which was — she noticed with a pang that caught her off guard — the Cape May shirt again, faded and stretched at the collar.
The one she'd bought him from a surf shop on the boardwalk because he'd spilled coffee on his button-down and needed something to wear.
She'd grabbed the first thing on the rack.
That was years ago. He still wore it. She didn't know what to do with that.
"I made pasta," he said, when she walked in.
"I can see that."
"From scratch."
"I can see that too." She looked at the counter.
A hand-crank pasta machine — new, still shiny, clearly purchased for this occasion — was clamped to the edge of the island.
Beside it, several sheets of dough in varying thicknesses, some translucent, some thick enough to sole a shoe.
A pot of water was boiling on the stove.
The sauce smelled promising: garlic, tomatoes, something herby.
"How many attempts?" she asked.
"The pasta or the sauce?"
"Both."
"The sauce is on its second iteration. The first one burned because I forgot I was reducing it while I was fighting with the pasta machine.
" He held up his hand. There was a red mark across his palm where he'd apparently caught it on the crank.
"The pasta is on its — I've lost count. The first batch came out like cardboard.
The second batch was so thin it disintegrated in the water.
This batch might be okay. I'm not sure. I don't actually know what good fresh pasta is supposed to look like before you cook it. "
"It's supposed to look like that," she said, pointing at the one sheet on the counter that was even and smooth. "Not like that." She pointed at the rest.
"Right. I was afraid of that."
She took off her coat. She hung it on the chair: the same chair, every time, and she'd started noticing that Drew never moved it, never hung his own coat there, left it open for her as though keeping the space available was a practice he'd committed to without being asked.
She set her bag on the counter and looked at the pasta machine, the flour, the mess and the man standing in the middle of it all.
"You need to knead it longer," she said. "The gluten hasn't developed. That's why it's tearing."
"I kneaded it for ten minutes."
"It needs fifteen. At least." She picked up one of the failed sheets and pressed it between her fingers. "See how it breaks? There's no elasticity. You've got to work it until it feels like — here." She pulled a piece of the better dough toward her and pressed it. "Feel that."
He reached over and pressed the dough with his index finger, the way you'd poke something you weren't sure was alive. "It's ... springy?"
"It's springy. That's what you're going for. Smooth and springy. If it feels like Play-Doh, you're not there yet."
"Everything I've made tonight has felt like Play-Doh."
"That's because you're impatient. Pasta doesn't care about your timeline."
He looked at her. A smile started at the corner of his mouth, the crooked one she used to see when she said something that caught him off guard, the one that made his brown eyes go warm and slightly helpless.
"Are you going to help me or are you going to stand there critiquing my gluten development? "
"I haven't decided yet."
"Mad."
"Fine." She washed her hands. She pulled the dough toward her and started kneading — heel of the palm, push, fold, quarter turn, repeat — and the rhythm came back to her body like breathing, like blinking, like every repetitive physical act she'd been doing since she was twenty-two and a culinary instructor named Margaret had stood behind her and said the dough tells you when it's ready, you just have to learn how to listen.
Drew watched her. She could see him watching with real attention. He was studying her hands. The pressure, the angle, the rhythm. He was trying to learn.
"Can I—" He gestured at the dough.
"Wash your hands first. And take off your Rolex. You'll get flour in the links."
He washed his hands. He took off his watch and set it on the windowsill, the same windowsill where the Diptyque candle used to sit.
The candle was gone. She didn't know when he'd moved it, but it was gone, and in its place was a small ceramic pot with a basil plant that was struggling valiantly to stay alive in insufficient light.
"Is that basil?" she asked.
"It's trying to be basil. I'm told it needs more sun than this window provides but I can't figure out where else to put it."
"South-facing window. Living room."
"The living room gets south light?"
"Drew. You've lived here for years."
"I've never grown anything before. I didn't know which direction the light came from. I still don't fully understand why it matters."
"Because plants need light. That's ... that's photosynthesis. That's middle school science."
"I went to business school. We didn't cover photosynthesis."
She laughed. It came out before she could stop it — a real laugh.
It started in her stomach, rose through her chest and came out of her mouth with the surprised, involuntary force of something that had been locked in a closet and finally found the door.
She laughed at his baffled expression, at the flour in his hair, at a billionaire tech founder who didn't know which direction sunlight came from and was trying to grow basil on a north-facing windowsill in a penthouse thirty-two floors above Philadelphia.
And Drew laughed too. The sound of their laughter together in this kitchen — this kitchen she'd designed, where she'd cooked a thousand meals and eaten most of them standing up— the sound of both of them laughing at the same time was so familiar and so lost and so exactly right that it cracked something open in her chest that she'd been holding shut for months.
She looked at him. He was leaning against the counter with flour on his face, tears of laughter in his eyes and the basil plant dying slowly behind him, and he was the man she’d fallen for.
He was the man who'd driven her to the shore on their third date because she'd mentioned waves.
He was the man who'd practiced his vows in the bathroom mirror.
He was the man who'd shown up at a soup kitchen, chopped onions badly and mopped floors without being asked.
Who learned to roast a chicken and bought a pasta machine and was trying, with his whole clumsy, late-arriving, imperfect heart, to learn the language she'd been speaking for their entire marriage.
He was also the man who'd dismissed her repeatedly.
Who'd asked her what she was doing in the room while he held another woman.
He was both of those men, he would always be both of those men, and the question wasn't whether she could forget the second one but whether she could hold both of them in her hands at the same time and choose to stay.
Madeleine put down the dough. She wiped her hands on the dish towel and walked around the island.
Drew stopped laughing. He straightened. He watched her come toward him and she could see him holding himself still, forcing himself not to move, not to reach, not to close the distance from his side.
The restraint was visible in his whole body — shoulders tight, hands gripping the counter behind him, jaw set.
He was letting her come to him. He was letting her choose.
She stopped in front of him. Close. Inches.
She could see the flour on his jaw, the pulse in his throat and the way his chest moved when he breathed.
She put her hand on his face, her palm against his cheek, her thumb tracing the line of his jaw.
He closed his eyes at the contact, a full-body response, as though her hand on his skin was the first thing he'd been able to feel in months.
"Open your eyes," she said.
He opened them. Brown, wet, afraid, hopeful.
She kissed him. Slow. Deliberate. She pressed her mouth against his, her hand stayed on his face and she kissed him with the full weight of a choice she was making in real time, with all the evidence in front of her — the failures, the letter, the soup kitchen, the chicken dinner, the pasta, the basil, the flour in his hair.
He kissed her back. Gently at first, as though she were something he might break, and then deeper, his hands coming up to her waist, and the touch was careful, intentional, nothing automatic about it.
His thumbs pressed against her hip bones, his mouth moved against hers.
She could taste wine, garlic and the salt of the tears that were running down both their faces, because they were both crying, quietly.
Madeleine pulled back. She didn't push him away. She just leaned back far enough to look up at him, her hand still on his face, his hands still on her waist, the space between them small and warm and full of flour dust.
“Come back,” he whispered.
"I'm not ready to,” she said. “Not yet. But I do miss you. And I love you. That hasn’t changed.”
His hands tightened on her waist. A small motion. A reflex. She watched his face — the hope, the fear, the restraint. The love. All of it visible, all of it unguarded, letting her see every single thing.
"That's enough," he said. "That's more than enough."
She stepped back and wiped her eyes. She looked at the pasta dough, which was still sitting on the counter, half-kneaded, waiting to become something.
"Your pasta's going to dry out," she said.
"I don't care about the pasta."
"I do. Come on. I'll show you how to roll it properly."
They made pasta together. She taught him how to feed the dough through the machine, how to catch it without tearing it, how to dust it with semolina so the sheets didn't stick.
They cooked it in the boiling water — two minutes, no more, fresh pasta doesn't need long — and tossed it with his sauce, which was actually good, better than good, the garlic and tomatoes reduced to something rich and concentrated and honest.
They ate at the island. They drank the Sancerre.
They didn't talk about the kiss or the marriage or the future.
They talked about pasta, basil and which direction the living room faced and whether Carl's daughter had ever come to Broad Street Kitchen for the chicken and dumplings (she had; she'd cried).
Madeleine left at ten. At the door, she turned.
"The sauce was good, Drew."
"Yeah?"
"Really good. You've been paying attention."
Madeleine closed the door behind her. She stood in the hallway, pressed her back against the wall, put her hand over her mouth and breathed.
It took everything in her not to go back inside, but something held her back. She didn’t know what it was.
But she had to make herself walk away.