At that hour, and on that little sleep, it was the full extent of my conversational range.
“You wouldn’t leave a pregnant woman standing in a hallway, would you?” the other woman asked, rubbing one hand over the curve of her stomach.
And just like that, I knew who she was before she even introduced herself.
“I’m Violet, by the way,” she said. “Violet Nishimura. I’m sorry we didn’t get to meet in Seattle.”
I grunted again, which really was not doing much for my image as an intelligent, articulate adult, but I stepped aside all the same and let them in.
The two of them moved through my kitchen with such ease that I could only sit there and watch, half convinced my brain was still asleep and had simply produced this highly specific domestic hallucination. Lily found mugs, Violet located plates, someone turned on the kettle, and within seconds my tiny apartment had been taken over.
Why were they here?
Why were they both here?
And perhaps more importantly, had I put on underwear before going to bed?
I discreetly tugged at the hem of my nightshirt just in case and tried to look less like a woman who was a mess before breakfast.
Within what felt like no time at all, I had a cup of coffee pressed into one hand and a plate balancing a croissant and an aggressively decadent chocolate twist on my lap.
I looked up at them and blinked. They sat opposite me on the sofa, both of them far too serene for women who had staged an intervention before sunrise.
“I feel like this is a setup,” I managed at last, before taking a sip of coffee that made the caffeine gods sing directly into my bloodstream.
“It isn’t,” Lily said at once.
But Violet tilted her head to the side. “Well. It kind of is. And I’ll tell you this much, that boy must have reached a truly catastrophic level of desperation to ask us for help.”
Lily nudged her with an exasperated look. “Don’t say it like that. He loves her, that’s all.”
Right. So I would have to kill Pietro for this. Noted.
I took another sip of coffee and decided not to argue, mostly because the pastry looked excellent and I didn’t want to risk being left alone with my principles and no croissant.
Lily said to me more gently, “it’s just that Pietro made a mistake.”
“A big one,” I added.
She grimaced. “Yes. A very big one. And I’m not here to plead his case.”
Violet snorted. “No. He’s an idiot. He can deal with that himself.”
I liked Violet Nishimura.
“But,” she continued, reaching for a pastry with the calm assurance of a woman entirely at home in other people’s kitchens, “truth be told, we both married imbeciles.” She jerked a thumb toward Lily. “By the way, in case you weren’t aware, her imbecile husband is my brother, which means I am related to two imbeciles. Three, actually, if you count my nephew. It seems to be a strong family trait.”
Lily gave her a look over the rim of her mug. “You do realize you’re also part of that family.”
“Yes,” Violet said. “Which only proves I’m very generous.”
Against my better judgment, my mouth twitched.
Lily noticed immediately and smiled in that soft, maddeningly perceptive way of hers. “That’s better.”
“Don’t get too excited,” I said. “You’re still here suspiciously early with carbohydrates and caffeine.”
“Fair,” Violet said. “But for the record, the pastries were my idea. Lily was going to lead with warmth and maternal wisdom, which is all very lovely but less effective before caffeine.”