Page 92 of Never Alone
"Hmm? No."
"Don't you have to be at the bakery?"
"Oh. Benjie asked to swap days off with me. So I'm home."
She kept working. The cookies went down on the rack one by one in a neat pattern, two fingers' width between each. She was concentrating on the spacing.
"I found this on your shelf. I hope you don't mind that I went into it. I was looking for a cookbook, and the box has been sitting there as long as I have, and the recipes were really good."
The cookies looked exactly like the ones Shelby used to bake for me when I got home from school.
"Try one?" She held the plate out. "Don't tell me you don't eat sweets. I know better now."
I picked one up.
I took a bite.
It tasted exactly like Shelby's.
For a moment, I was sixteen, standing in the kitchen of the rented house on Marlboro Street where Shelby and I had been each other's only person, and Shelby was at the counter with flour on her nose and on the front of her T-shirt, and she wassliding a tray off the rack onto the counter the way Tessa had just slid a tray off the rack onto the counter.
"So? Is it good?"
I nodded.
"It's good."
"Great. I hope Noah likes it."
She went back to her cookies.
I watched her work.
She was humming. Her hands were unhurried. The smile on her face was the smile I had seen on her when we were sixteen. She had been all sunshine then. She was something close to it now.
I'd been avoiding bakeries for eighteen years. Because the smell reminded me of what Shelby used to make for me, and I’d decided the day she had died that I didn't get to have what she made anymore. Not after I'd done nothing. Not when the reason she was no longer alive was me. For eighteen years, I had not eaten one of her cookies, and I had not deserved to.
Standing in my own kitchen with a rack of Shelby's cookies made by a woman who had survived her own abusive husband felt like Shelby reaching for me.
I finished the one I had taken. I set the napkin on the counter.
"I'm going to shower."
"Oh—Cole. Jamie texted earlier. The boys are asking if Noah can come over to play after school. I told her yes. He's going home with them. So you don't have to pick him up today."
"Okay."
I went to the bathroom and closed the door.
I came out of the bathroom in jeans and a T-shirt. The apartment was quiet. Tessa had moved from the kitchen to the couch in the living room with one of the books Quinn had been sending her. Quinn and Tessa had drifted into a steady texting friendship since they met at the barbecue, mostly running on book recommendations.
I managed to get a bunch of chores done, things for the house and around the apartment. The day passed quickly without my noticing. Late afternoon, I checked back in to see Tessa still absorbed in her book.
"I feel like eating out today."
I hadn't planned to say that. I didn't know why I'd said it. I'd been about to ask if there was anything in the fridge for dinner. I'd asked her on a date instead.
"What?" Tessa looked up from the book.
