Novels by Audrey Khloe

She was nervous at breakfast and didn't show it except in the coffee.She made it stronger than usual. I noticed and said nothing and drank it and watched her move through the kitchen with the contained energy of someone who had already run the conversation in her head seventeen times and was now waiting for the actual version to begin.The journalist was a woman named Claire Park, Theo's contact, mid-thirties, the kind of person whose calmness was clearly professional but didn't feel performed. She arrived at ten with a small recorder and no photographer, which Mara had requested and I had confirmed.I had offered to leave. Mara had said no.We sat in the living room, Claire across from us, and from the first five minutes I understood why Theo had recommended her. She didn't start with us. She started with the bakery."Tell me about the space," she said to Mara. "What it feels like to walk in."And Mara talked.I had heard her talk about the bakery before, practically, specifically,

The interview was scheduled for Friday.Thursday night I couldn't sleep. Not from dread exactly, more from the specific alertness that came before something that mattered. I lay in the dark thinking about what I would say, how I would talk about my mother without making it grief-performance, how to tell a true story without telling the whole story.At some point I gave up and went to the kitchen.Dominic was already there.He was at the island with a glass of water and his phone face down, not working, just sitting in the way I had learned meant he was thinking through something he hadn't resolved yet. He looked up when I came in."Couldn't sleep," I said."No."I got water and sat across from him and we existed in the kitchen at two in the morning the way we exist everywhere now, without effort, without performance."Are you nervous about tomorrow," he said."About talking about her. Yes." I turned the glass in my hands. "Everything else I can manage. But she's — I don't have a contr

On the drive back she fell asleep again.Same as the first time, in the car after the restaurant with Theo, head tipped toward the window, hands loose. I had learned since then that she slept like someone who had earned it, completely, no halfway about it. She was either fully present or entirely gone and there was no in between with her about anything.I drove and didn't turn the radio on.I thought about what I had said over a paper plate in a coastal fish market and how it had been the least controlled moment I had engineered in recent memory and how it had also been the most right I had felt about anything in years. There was a lesson that I was still processing.She woke up twenty minutes from the city, the way she always did, immediately present."Still driving," she said."Still driving."She stretched slightly and looked out the window at the highway and then at me."You're thinking," she said."I'm always thinking.""Differently than usual." She turned in the seat to face me

We took the coast drive on Wednesday. Dominic cleared his morning, which based on what I knew of his schedule meant he had moved three things and told no one where he was going. He came out of the bedroom at eight in jeans and a dark sweater and I had never seen him in jeans before and I made a deliberate decision not to comment on it because I would not have been able to do so neutrally. He drove. I hadn't expected that either. I had assumed there would be Patrick and the car, but it was just Dominic and a slate grey vehicle I hadn't seen before and the highway heading north. I put the window down. He didn't comment. We didn't talk for the first twenty minutes and it was the best twenty minutes I'd had in recent memory. Cities falling away, water appearing between hills, the particular relief of movement without destination. "My mother used to sing on drives," I said eventually. "Old Filipino love songs that she only half-remembered. She'd fill in the parts she forgot with h

She wore dark green.Not for them. That was the thing. She walked out of her room at nine-fifteen in a dark green dress that was professional without being costumed, hair up, the ring on her finger, and she looked like herself. Exactly herself. No performance in any of it.I was already in my jacket by the door and I watched her cross the living room and thought about what she had said about the coast and about two weeks and about the way she had looked at me last night when she said “after tomorrow” like she was already somewhere past this moment, already looking forward to what came next with me in it."You're staring," she said."You look—""Don't say appropriate for the venue.""I wasn't going to." I held her gaze. "You look like yourself. That's what I was going to say."She stopped and looked at me for a moment and something moved through her expression, quick and real and then collected."Let's go," she said.The meeting was in my downtown office, the boardroom on the thirty-se

Sunday was quiet in a way that felt earned.No calls from Victor. Nothing new from Rachel Howe. Camille had gone silent which Theo said was worse than when she was loud, but I decided not to think about that until Monday. I went to the bakery in the morning, did the books, interviewed the two candidates for Rosa's position, and hired the better one, a woman named Patricia who had fifteen years of bakery experience and a no-nonsense handshake that reminded me of my mother's suppliers.Small problem, solved. It felt good.I got back to the penthouse at three and found Dominic at the kitchen island with his laptop and four physical folders open around him which was apparently how he worked on weekends, distributed chaos that only made sense to him.He looked up. "How was the interview?""Hired her.""Quick decision.""She knew immediately what was wrong with our display case layout and told me without being asked." I dropped my bag. "That's the person you want."He almost smiled. "Yes. I