"Well?" Santos says, turning around.
"The boat's at four," I say.
His face falls.
"And I'm not on it," I say.
The saffron in the room goes warm and wide and open and Santos puts the wooden spoon down and looks at me with those warm brown eyes and says something in Italian that I don't ask him to translate because the way he says it tells me everything I need to know.
Tomas puts the biscuit tin down and looks at me over his glasses.
Matteo says nothing, and the almost-smile does what it does, brief and real and entirely his, and I feel it in my chest and I let myself feel it and I don't look away from it.
"Tiramisu," I say.
"Tiramisu," Santos says, and picks up the wooden spoon.
As I sit and watch him in the kitchen, for the first time since we've been on this island, my strawberry and rose sit warm and open in the air and don't apologize for staying or making an effort.
Neither do I.
25
SANTOS
The tiramisu takes three hours and Jennifer supervises every minute of it. I can’t believe that she has been on the island for six weeks. It feels longer.
She is sitting on the kitchen stool with her tea, occasionally offering observations that are not instructions but which we follow immediately and completely because they are correct, and also because watching her face when she talks about food is the best thing that has happened in this kitchen since she arrived on this island and I intend to create as many opportunities for it as possible.
"The mascarpone needs to be room temperature," she says, to her tea.
"It is room temperature," I say.
"It's slightly cold," she says. "You can tell by the way it's resisting the whisk."
I look at the mascarpone. I look at her. "How can you tell from over there?"
"I can always tell," she says simply, and takes a sip of her tea, and she is right, obviously she is right, and I adjust the mascarpone and say nothing about it and Tomas makes thesound from the corner where he is reading the biscuit tin label for the third time and Matteo's mouth does the thing.
The living room is warm in the late afternoon light, the September gold coming through the windows and laying itself across the sofa and the coffee table and the three of us arranging ourselves around Jennifer with the naturalness that has been developing for six weeks and has finally stopped requiring effort.
She is on the sofa with her feet tucked under her and the green shirt soft against her shoulders and her dark honey hair loose from the pin she put it up with this morning, and she is looking at the tiramisu on the coffee table with the expression of a professional about to assess something.
I sit beside her.
Matteo takes the armchair across. Tomas sits on the other side of her, close, his silver musk warm in the afternoon air.
I pick up the spoon.
"Allow me," I say.
She looks at me. "You're going to feed me tiramisu."
"My grandmother always said it tastes better when someone feeds it to you," I say. "She was a very wise woman."
Jennifer looks at the tiramisu. Then at me. The corner of her mouth moves. "If it's bad I'm going to tell you," she says.
"I know," I say. "That's why I made it properly."