She makes a sound that is almost, almost a laugh. "Fine. You're allowed improvements." Then, quieter: "Jen. Are you okay?"
I lie back again. The ceiling fan turns. The water makes its sound somewhere below the hill, steady and unhurried, going about its entire business without any reference to mine whatsoever.
"I think so," I say. "It was a weird day. But the kitchen is genuinely excellent and she kicked when the lamb came out right, which I'm choosing to interpret as a good sign."
"It's a great sign."
"And the herb garden has an actual bay tree."
"The thing is I know how bad things can be, and us women think we're all to blame. I know I did when David died and left us with all kinds of debt. I thought I had no one and Violet helped us."
"I know." She told me the story, about how some loan sharks were after her, she fled to Cedar Ridge and found love. If only my life was a fairytale, then I wouldn't feel like crying right now.
"You're going to be fine," Anna says, firmly, in the voice she uses when she has decided something is true and is stating it into existence. "You're going to come here with your money and your plan and your baby, and we're going to figure out the rest together. All right?"
"All right," I say.
"Good night."
"Good night, Anna."
The call ends.
I stay horizontal on the bed for a moment with the phone on my chest, looking at the ceiling fan, thinking about lamb and tarragon and bay trees and the way four seconds of correcting someone's grip can apparently undo three months of perfectly good decisions.
Then something at the window makes me stop thinking about all of that entirely.
A shape. Just past the curtain edge, where the fabric doesn't quite reach the frame, a suggestion of something just outside in the warm dark. Still. Deliberate. Not quite hidden.
I don't move.
My nose does its job before my brain does. Slow and certain, picking through the salt air and the yellow flowers and the evening, finding it underneath all of it, the thing it apparently stored in permanent memory at two in the morning in a hotel suite it has no business still cataloguing.
Sandalwood. Dark. Controlled. Present in the specific way of someone who has chosen to be outside a window rather than at a door.
Matteo.
He scared the crap out of me, but I won’t let him know I know that he’s there.
My omega wants me to to go the window, but I’m telling her to shut up tonight. I’m going to bed.
I get up from the bed.
Cross to the window, and draw the curtains.
I get back into bed, pretend he's not there, and just try to get some sleep. It's going to be tough, but as I reflect on the conversation with Anna, I know I can do it.
16
JENNIFER
My third morning on the island starts with nausea, but, because life loves a joke, no billionaires have wandered back into the kitchen demanding coffee or pretending they know how to cut an onion, so the job has been easier today.
The prenatal vitamin goes down at five forty-three, which is four minutes earlier than yesterday, which is either progress or proof that passing out on the prep notes at nine thirty actually works. I was in bed by ten and got a full seven hours for the first time since I left home. Well, my old home. Before I got kicked out of it.
Either way, I'm at the counter with my one allowed coffee before the island has fully decided what kind of morning it's going to be, and that feels like something.
The kitchen is mine for at least an hour, before anyone else wakes up and wanders in.