Page 51 of My Darling Girls

“Finn,” Jo calls out, setting her hat down on the rack by the door and shrugging off her coat. “Are you cooking?” She hangs her coat and turns toward the kitchen. Why does she always ask the wrong questions? Shouldn’t she ask him why he’s in her house, how he got inside, and why on earth he feels the right to be here? Instead, for some unexplainable reason, she thinks about the food he’s preparing and the mess she’ll have to clean up after him.

Finn steps outside the kitchen and leans on the doorframe. A playful smile pulls at the corners of his mouth, not fully forming. His trousers are black, contrasting with the whiteness of his shirt. The sleeves are rolled up, showing off sculpted forearms. He’s holding a towel in one hand and a shard of glass in the other. “There’s never any food in your pantry.” His eyes are deep wells, pulling her in. “I found some rice. Although, I haven’t touched it.” The light in the kitchen shines over his tall frame, and he almost glows in the twilight. “I brought my own ingredients. You like lamb?”

Jo smooths wayward locks that escaped her bun in the evening breeze while she was walking home. “I don’t remember inviting you.”

A roguish smile stretches his lips by a few degrees. “I invited myself.”

“How did you get in?”

A small shrug of broad shoulders. “Your door wasn’t locked. I knocked and it opened. I must’ve accidentally pushed it inward. Hasn’t anyone told you it’s not safe in the city?”

A sense of doubt creeps under her skin. She remembers locking the door. Does she, though? Her brain was still wrapped in the opium cloud as she was rushing to see Grace. Her day is still a blur of words and fraying images. So much happened in a span of hours. Another wave of doubt comes crashing. Maybe she locked the door. Maybe she didn’t. She schools her face under his inspecting gaze, holds her thoughts tight, not letting them escape.

“Did Ira send you?” The rain starts its incessant patter against the windowpanes and almost drowns out her words.

“My uncle?” He looks genuinely surprised. “Why would Ira send me to cook dinner for you?”

“Right,” she says, studying his face. The angle of his brows. The set of his jaw. The way his eyes sweep over her, taking in her dress, her hair, and pausing at her lips. Can she tell a lie from the truth just by looking at him? August once told her it was possible to see if someone was genuinely happy or upset in the photographs just by studying their faces. He said people transfer their emotions to the lens. In the way their eyes would focus on the camera. The tilt of their heads. The tension in their shoulders. The uneasiness in the faces while they wait for the flash.

Almost clinically, Jo focuses on Finn’s face, its planes and angles, the peaks and dips. His sharp cheekbones, his strong chin, the curve of his lips. There is nothing about Finn that suggests he’s lying. He is looking directly at her. His shoulders are rolled back with no visible sign of tension. If anything, he looks calm. Content, even.

“He wouldn’t,” she concludes.

“Anyway, I’m glad you’re back. Just in time to try my lamb stew.”

She approaches the kitchen and stands on the threshold, watching Finn’s ministrations with pots and plates and silverware. A man has never cooked for her. The men she knew in her life always expected her to cook for them. Some with kindness, like August. Some with the undercurrent of violence like her father. But a man taking care of her dinner? That’s all new. Surprising, even exhilarating.

She inhales the aroma of a cooked meal, and suddenly, the space around her acquires a dreamlike haze. There’s a burning tightness in her throat. She’s on the verge of tears, and she doesn’t understand why. She’s feeling something she forbade herself to feel a long time ago.

Jo blinks her tears away and assumes a chair by the table. She cannot fall apart in front of Finn, who puts a steamy bowl down before her and then also sits at the table. She looks at the chunks of meat, carrots, and potatoes, and her stomach contracts painfully. She’s never felt hunger like this before—painful, feral. She isn’t sure if this hunger, this overwhelming need, is for the food or something else entirely.

“Food’s meant to be consumed, Jo. Not stared at.” His voice is soft, and she wonders if he feels her emotional state. He pushes a basket of brown bread to the center of the table. “I’m sorry if I frightened you. It was not my intention.”

“Ira was here earlier today,” Jo says, taking a spoonful of the stew. The lamb is tender and juicy and falls apart in her mouth. “I’m not used to so many visitors in one day.”

“What did he want?” Finn asks between bites. “Must’ve been important if he made it all the way across town and to your house.”

“You really don’t know he came to see me this morning? It’s hard to believe, Finn.”

“He doesn’t tell me everything.”

She doesn’t say anything at first. Perhaps Finn isn’t lying. “Your uncle wanted a great many things.” She takes a piece of bread, fresh and crumbling under her fingers. “I don’t really want to talk about him.”

“Are you going to do what he asked you to?”

“Should I?”

“Ira’s word is law in Chicago.”

“Not my law.” Jo eats a piece of potato and sets her spoon on the table by the bowl. A sharp sense of foreboding pokes at her like a thorn between her ribs. “And I think you know what he wants of me. Because you told him about finding Grace here. About her photography lessons.” Finn doesn’t answer, but a fleeting shadow in his eyes tells Jo everything she needs to know. “If Grace chooses to come here and learn photography, I won’t stop her.”

“Why the hell not?” There’s an edge to his voice. The threadbare patience of someone who has dealt with this kind of resistance far too many times. He sets his hands on the table firmly as if bracing himself against a storm. “How many times must I repeat myself? If you don’t do what he asks, there’ll be consequences.”

Jo chews slowly on a piece of bread. “Don’t yell at me,” she says with a sigh so deep it might be coming from her bones. “And don’t lecture me about Ira or your family.” She picks up her spoon and takes the mouthful of stew. “Who taught you to cook like this?”

“Changing the subject already?”

“I told you I don’t want to talk about Ira. Tell me about yourself. How you learned to cook.”