“So, does this committee have positions? I vote we make the new girl chair. You up for it, Kacy?”
“Sure.” But I knew I didn’t sound sure. If Alondra really did hear about everything, how long before she heard about me? A simple internet search would reveal that as far as the world was concerned, I couldn’t be trusted. It had felt so good to talk to Dr. Lindsey and even better to be honest with Lena. But my own coworkers at the museum hadn’t believed I was innocent. How could I expect these strangers to trust me?
I twisted my napkin in my hands. “Or maybe …”
“How about cochair?” Elizabeth offered.
“Excellent.” With a wave, Alondra was gone.
On the way home, the traffic seemed to increase every minute. Elizabeth frowned, her hands clenched around the wheel. “So we’ll probably end up at the club, but you and I should visit two or three other places and get estimates.”
We drove in silence for another mile. One difference between Elizabeth and Aimee was this pause. Elizabeth answered my question and then waited, letting me think. Aimee used to answer and then jump into the empty space, filling it with suggestions, sometimes serious, more often not, spinning our conversation off course. Because it wasn’t about getting the job done; it was about bonding, living in the moment.
Then Elizabeth said, “We’ll also need to get the invitations worked up. With your art background, maybe you’d enjoy that?”
“Sounds good.” And it did. That was something I could handle.
“Once you have them ready, we use the Fort Bend Copy Center. After you email it to them, call to make sure they’ve got it. They’re pretty old-school.”
“About the money …” My words sounded artificial, wavery.
“You can either pay and submit a receipt or get an invoice and they’ll give you a check to take back. We’ve got it set up so each check gets countersigned.”
“You can’t be too careful.” So there was no way I could be accused of embezzling, no opportunity that could be misconstrued.
“Was this the kind of thing you used to do?”
“One of the things.”
“Houston’s got a ton of art museums. Do you want to go back to work?”
And a flood of sorrow rose in me, as if by lowering my guard I’d given it leave to suffuse my entire body. But this time I wasn’t braced against it, wasn’t fighting, and instead of bursting into tears or running away, I let it spread out along every limb, warm and heavy. I was tired of pretending I wasn’t sad.
“I can’t.” I didn’t raise my head, not wanting to look at Elizabeth. I spoke slowly, careful not to let too much emotion spill out, placing one word in front of the next like walking a tightrope. “My best friend at my last job framed me. They think I stole some paintings and embezzled money. There wasn’t enough proof to bring charges, but I don’t think I can work in a museum, or gallery, or maybe anything like that again.”
After a few minutes of studying my hands and waiting, I raised my head. Elizabeth was looking steadily at the road without expression. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Did she believe I was innocent? Did she think I was guilty of lying, stealing, or oversharing? There was no way to know without asking, and I realized it didn’t matter.
I was tired of hiding my past, and I wouldn’t apologize for it.
Not anymore.
CHAPTER
8
WEEKS PASSED. WHILE the news screamed stories about the murdered man and woman found in pieces under the live oak trees of Brazos Bend State Park, Michael and I fortified our home. “It’s safer to park in the garage and shut the door before you go into the house,” he told me after the news reported another driveway robbery—on top of the home invasions and the convenience store shootings and the drug busts and speculations about the missing drivers of at least two other abandoned vehicles. Somehow I’d thought we had left big-city crime behind when we moved to the suburbs, but as the fourth-biggest city in the United States, Houston’s presence dominated our almost-idyllic neighborhood.
One weekend Michael and I pulled down the wallpaper in the kitchen, spraying and scraping it off the drywall where it had been glued. In the paint store, I saw kits for a faux finish called Venetian plaster. While I deliberated with the can in my hands, Michael came up behind me, and I held it so he could see the directions. Squinting, he said, “Sounds like a lot of work, but if you’re up for it, maybe do the small bathroom first. It could use a refresh.”
He wasn’t wrong. The burgundy-and-pine-striped wallpaper looked like something the old man had chosen alone, while the cream paper with pale-pink flowers we’d stripped from the kitchen might have been the choice of a long-ago wife. Now we’d designated one of the bedrooms for guests, and the other, currently empty, would probably be a nursery.
Someday.
We bought creamy paint with a buttery undertone for the kitchen, spray-on texture to cover the flat surface of the drywall, drop cloths and sandpaper, rollers and more wallpaper remover, and the Venetian plaster too, even though it involved about sixteen different steps.
I had the time.
I’d exchanged texts with Elizabeth, the subtext of her words impossible to decipher. She wasn’t an emoji user, and her messages were precisely punctuated so that even an invitation to meet for lunch read like a mild reproof.
My morning walks hadn’t synced up with Rahmia either. I’d seen her and her son on their way to school, their hands clasped and Bibi dancing before them on her leash, but they’d all been too far away for more than a distant greeting.
But Lena had texted over and over—we’d hung out by her pool and gone to the nursery to get more plants for the beds Michael and Brady were building, and late every afternoon we walked together around the neighborhood, sometimes finishing with a dip in her pool. We talked nonstop. I’d learned that Brady had a background in engineering but preferred “being his own boss.” He ran a home improvement company with a fleet of vans, each stocked for a specific task: locksmith, HVAC, roofing, plumbing.
“So he’s like a contractor?” I asked on one of our walks. The air was thick with heat and humidity, and we’d followed the concrete sidewalk past the entrance to Bluebonnet Skies and were headed toward the elementary school.
“Pretty much, except he specializes in residential. Hey, let’s turn here.” And Lena veered to the right, following a branch of the sidewalk that took us under the power lines in an open space between the two brick walls that enclosed separate neighborhoods. “Those master builders are cheap as shit.”
“And he’s certified in all those things?”
“He’s certified in enough, and he fills in the gaps with other professionals, guys who don’t or can’t run their own businesses. I used to do the scheduling, but we’ve got it mostly automated now. My degree’s in accounting.”
At my expression, she burst out laughing. “I know, you didn’t see that one coming, did you? Everything in this world comes down to love or money, and I figured there was only one of those I could get certified in. Brady’s crap at planning. I handle all our books, I drew up the master lists for each van, and I set up our computer scheduling for employees and customers.”
“You’re a good team.” I wished Michael and I had something like a shared business, something concrete that I could point to and say, See, we were meant for each other.
“Damn straight. Brady has less than zero patience for the high-maintenance types we deal with like that-bitch-Sandy.” She pushed a damp curl away from her face. “Did I tell you now that we’ve redone the kitchen and that fucking backsplash three times, she’s trying to renegotiate the price? I swear, last week I spent more time in her damn house than mine.”
Better Lena than me. I’d avoided Sandy at the last Bluebonnet meeting, but the memory of calling her a bitch to her face made me warmer than the late-afternoon sun. We approached the drainage ditch we called the “bayou.” A sign warned that alligators might be present, but all I saw from the wood
en bridge that spanned the water were cattle egrets, bright white even in the shadow, and the sun gleaming off the dark turtles that clustered at the shore.
“How do you have time for the Bluebonnets?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I go to the general meetings, drop our ad in the newsletter, and make sure I’m at the fund raiser. But you won’t find me choosing flowers for the fashion show or getting blitzed at book club.”
“Why do you go at all?” Lena didn’t seem like the kind of person who did anything she didn’t want to do. I tried to imagine her at a downtown restaurant, sipping cocktails and debating fund raiser themes, but I couldn’t. She was Carnival and those women were Easter Sunday.
“I’m waiting for them to need me. When they get back home and something goes wrong in their perfect little lives, I need them to think about me. Me and Brady.” Lena pulled her hair back off her neck and tilted her face up to the sun, all without slowing her stride. “Those bitches will gossip and backstab and God knows what all, but when they have to choose, they’ll pick one of their own. Especially the kind of work Brady does where people are all up in your home. They see me at a meeting, makes them think they can trust my people in their house. Like we’re friends.”
Practical. Almost chilling how practical it was. “Some of them are nice. Elizabeth—”
“You made a friend. Sweet.” The corner of her mouth twisted.
Okay, that sarcastic edge was weird. “You’d like her.”
“I know her.” Lena looked away from me, our steps in sync even as the long silence stretched out. “She’s fine. Uptight, but fine. It’s okay, honey, I’m not looking to make friends, but you do what you want. Just promise me one thing?”
“What?”
“Don’t go all Stepford on me.” She didn’t smile, and I couldn’t tell if she was kidding.
* * *
One day thunder rolled through the air, and it rained hard and fast, too much for the gutters, rain sheeting down over our back door.
My phone pinged: 2 wet 2 walk. Come hang out?
Even the few steps between my front door and Lena’s were enough to send rivulets of water down the back of my neck. I let myself in, calling out a greeting, and as I slipped off my wet shoes, the air conditioning and the damp made me shiver. Lena’s house was a two-story, designed by the same builder as ours but with a larger dining room and formal living room, which had been transformed into an office. Right inside the front door, there was a huge desk of golden wood and a desktop computer for “business stuff,” but I’d never seen her working there.
I followed Lena’s answering greeting and the smell of something rich and inviting into the kitchen. She said, “I’ve got a pot of beans on for soup, and I thought we’d bake some bread, if you’re up for it.”
“Sure.” I thought of my favorite little corner bakery in Jersey, where the man behind the counter wore a white apron and the glass shelves displayed loaves and rolls of every shape. “Isn’t it hard?”
“Not if you know how.” She pointed to a glass jar on the counter, filled with what looked like library paste. “Sourdough starter. That one goes back twenty years, from one my aunt uses. She always says that as long as you’ve got dried beans, flour, and a starter, you’re not too far from a good dinner.”
“Hey, if you say so, I’m all in. But I have absolutely zero culinary talent.” I went to the sink to wash my hands.
Under Lena’s direction, I mixed the flour and salt, then added the starter, stirring until I had a shaggy mass of yeasty, tangy dough in my bowl.
“Won’t the starter die now?” I could see a few bubbles around the edges of the jar.
“Nah. I’ll just stir in a cup each of flour and water and let it sit overnight. Here.” Lena reached under the counter and pulled out another mason jar. With the same wooden spoon, she scraped about half of the starter into the new jar. “You take this one.”
“I can’t. I’ll kill it.”
“Don’t be stupid. Just leave it on your counter until tomorrow morning, then stick it in the fridge. Every two weeks or so, give it a stir, toss or use about a cup of it, then add another cup each of flour and water, like I just did. Simple. The only thing you’ll kill is the part you throw out. But you’ll love this bread so much you’ll be using your starter all the time.”
She pulled a roll of masking tape and a marker from a drawer, wrote a label, and stuck it on the jar, where I read Live Starter from Lena. “We didn’t have a bunch of money, but we always ate well. My aunt was doing farm-to-table before it was ever a thing. I saw a jar like this on Pinterest, fancied up with a ‘friendship starter’ label. How many of those do you think get tossed out?”
I wrapped my hands around the jar and raised it to my face, inhaling a smell like good beer. It turned out that if you wanted to make sourdough, you either needed to start three days ahead of time or have an heirloom starter like this one, from Lena’s aunt to Lena to me. I said, “My mom was a school nurse. She was always pretty tired, so dinners were quick and easy. Fish sticks, mac and cheese, soup from a can. She didn’t make anything like this.”
More than the food, I remembered sitting around the table, the kitchen light shining down on my mom, my dad, and the three of us girls. That place felt safe. Even if you didn’t clear your plate, even if you hated vegetables with a fiery passion, even if your sister flicked peas or kicked you, our kitchen table was a place the darkness couldn’t touch.
Could I ever create something like that with Michael? A haven. A family.
Then Lena patted an open expanse of counter. “Time for the fun part. We’re going to beat the shit out of this dough.”
But my mind wasn’t on baking anymore. “Will you pass this starter on to your kids?”
For a second, her face went blank, and then she blinked and squinted. “Kids? Not my thing.”
She shook flour onto the counter and dumped the glob of dough onto it. With a rough motion, she tore the mass in two and pushed one a little closer to me. “First we knead it, then we’ll let it rise. Watch.” With force, she pressed and turned and thumped the dough, frowning at it. I got the feeling she was irritated with me.
But where could I have done something wrong or crossed the line? I tried to imitate her motions, pushing with the heels of my hands as the mass became smoother and more resistant.
Then she asked, “So, babies in your future?”
I thought about the feeling of sitting around the kitchen table with my sisters and my parents, the way Rahmia’s head had tilted down to hear her son. My own niece and nephew. The way Michael and I woke each morning in a bed big enough for a brood of kids and a dog. We had room in our house, room in our lives for more now, and I said, “Maybe.”
“Well, good for you.” She didn’t look at me, even though the practiced motion of kneading made it clear she could do it in her sleep. Maybe she was one of those people who hated kids. Maybe she thought I was just another silly Stepford wife after all.
The air was chilly between us, and her strong hands flipped and pounded the dough. She glanced at mine, still marred with streaks of unincorporated white flour.
“You’ve got to give it more force.” She reached out and took my dough, clenching it in one hand as she raised it and smacked it against the counter top. Then she flipped it, folded it, and dug the heels of her hands into it. The dough that had seemed so resistant to my hands just succumbed to hers.
She battered it rhythmically for another few minutes and then knocked it back to me. “There. Now we wait.”
Of course, Lena wasn’t good at waiting. Less than fifteen minutes later she’d turned off the beans, left the dough on the counter, and was driving me to “some taco truck Brady said is the best.”
The rain had blown past, and the sun seemed to turn the standing pools of water on the roads to steam. We sped over the interstate and exited into a part of Houston I hadn’t seen before.
The access road took us under the overpass, and in the darkness I
saw a cluster of men, one an older man in a battered army jacket despite the heat, holding a sign that read Hungry. Please help. Lena’s gaze darted to them. “Ex-military,” she said softly, and I wondered if she would pull over. The light changed, and we came to a stop beside him. He was about my father’s age, but the lines in his face were deeper and his shoulders more stooped.
The man drew closer to us, holding the cardboard sign in front of him with trembling hands. I fumbled for my bag and found it empty of cash. As I met his eyes and shook my head, his resigned expression didn’t change. He simply turned his attention to the next car in line, and when the light changed, he stepped back onto the pavement.
I wanted to do something, find something to help, but with a spray of water from our tires, we were back into the blinding sunlight as Lena skated through the intersection on a yellow light and went barreling down a side street lined with strip malls pocked with empty stores.
I couldn’t tell the difference between side streets and alleyways, but without so much as a peep from a GPS app, Lena whipped the car around one turn and then another, explaining, “Brady says it’s always in this area somewhere. At least for now. You find the best taco truck one day, and then it disappears. People move on or get shut down, then another one pops up.”
She pulled into a parking lot that seemed to back up to one of the derelict shopping strips. I couldn’t even tell what kind of stores they were from the yellowed doors edged with rust. One was propped open, and I could almost make out someone standing at a checkout, but whether it was auto parts or groceries or secondhand furniture was impossible to say.
A group of people, mostly men, were clustered around a battered white truck with a green awning. Street food was something I missed from the city, and eagerly I followed Lena. The tarry smell of wet asphalt yielded to the tantalizing odor of caramelized onions and browned meat.
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