Chapter 4: Sunday dinner

By Sunday I had mostly convinced myself I imagined it.

The photo. The grin. The resemblance that my tired, overwrought brain manufactured at six in the morning outside a building I had no business being outside of. I have had four days to think about it and thinking about it has gotten me nowhere useful so I have made the executive decision to file the entire night under things that happened and are now finished and move on with my life.

I am very good at moving on.

I pull up to my parents house just after two, parking behind Derek's truck which is already in the driveway because Derek is always early to anything involving food. The house looks the same as it always does. Brick front, flower beds my mother tends with a seriousness usually reserved for surgery, the porch light already on even though it is the middle of the afternoon.

I sit in the car for a moment with no particular reason to.

Then I grab the wine I brought and go inside.

The smell hits me first. Roast chicken and garlic and something sweet underneath it, probably the cornbread my mother makes when she is in a good mood. The hallway is warm and the house makes all the sounds it has always made — the specific creak of the third floorboard, the hum of the refrigerator, my father's voice somewhere in the back.

"She's here," Derek shouts from the living room, which is his version of a greeting.

"I can announce myself," I call back, dropping my bag on the hallway table and toeing off my shoes.

My mother appears from the kitchen with a dish towel over her shoulder and pulls me into a hug that smells like her perfume and whatever she has been cooking. Diane Donovan has never once in my memory greeted anyone without a hug first. It is simply not in her nature.

"You look tired," she says, pulling back and studying my face with the focused efficiency of a woman who has been reading me my whole life.

"I'm fine Mom."

"You're not sleeping."

"I sleep fine."

She gives me the look that says she doesn't believe me but has chosen her battles. She takes the wine, approves of it with a small nod and disappears back into the kitchen.

I find my father in his armchair with a book open on his lap and the television on at the same time, which is how he always reads. Robert Donovan is a man who requires background noise to concentrate, something I inherited fully and completely.

"There she is," he says, in the warm unhurried way he says most things.

"Hi Dad." I lean down and kiss his cheek. He smells like the same cologne he has worn since I was eight years old.

Derek appears in the doorway between the living room and the hall looking unreasonably pleased with himself. He is wearing a blue sweater that my mother probably bought him and his hair is freshly cut and he has the energy of someone sitting on exciting news.

I narrowed my eyes at him immediately.

"Why do you look like that," I say.

"Like what."

"Like you know something."

He grins. "Caleb's coming today."

I blink. "Your friend Caleb?"

"How many Calebs do I know Maya."

I have heard about Caleb for years in the abstract way you hear about someone who exists entirely in another part of your person's life. Derek's best friend from university. The one who moved to the west coast for work and then came back. The one Derek mentions at least twice a month in the context of Caleb would find this hilarious or I was talking to Caleb about that actually. A name so familiar it had stopped meaning anything specific.

"I didn't know he was back in Chicago," I say.

"Got back last week. Took a position at a firm downtown." Derek is already moving back toward the kitchen, talking over his shoulder. "You'll like him. Everyone likes him."

I followed him and told myself the mild unease in my stomach is just hunger.

Caleb arrives at half past two.

I was in the kitchen helping my mother with the salad, which means I am standing at the counter eating croutons while she does the actual work, when I hear the front door and Derek's voice going up a register the way it does when he is genuinely happy to see someone.

Loud greeting. The particular thump of two people doing that handshake hug thing. My mother smiles to herself over the salad bowl.

"That boy," she says warmly. "Derek lights up like a Christmas tree when Caleb's around."

"They've been friends a long time," I say, eating another crouton.

"Since freshman year. Caleb is good for him. Steadies him out." She hands me the salad tongs. "Go set the table."

I take the tongs and the bowl and push through into the dining room.

My father is already in there, moving his reading glasses to the top of his head, settling into his chair at the head of the table. The room smells like the candles my mother lights every Sunday without fail, something warm and faintly vanilla.

I set the bowl down and start arranging things and I hear them coming down the hall. Derek talking, Caleb's voice underneath it, lower, and something about that registers at the base of my skull in a way I do not immediately understand.

Then Derek appears in the doorway.

"Maya, come meet Caleb."

I look up.

The salad tongs are still in my hand.

Then Caleb steps in behind Derek,and everything inside me just… drops. Like someone pulled the floor out from under my lungs. 

For a second, I’m not even sure my body remembers how to stay upright.He is taller than I remembered or maybe the dining room is smaller than I think. Dark jacket, open collar, exactly as composed as he was on that rooftop four nights ago. His eyes find me immediately and something moves behind them, something quick and controlled that is gone before anyone else in the room could possibly catch it.

Nobody else catches it.

I caught it.

The whole thing lasts less than two seconds. Derek is already talking, saying my name, saying Caleb's name, doing the introduction with the enthusiasm of someone who has been waiting to do it. My father is standing to extend a hand. My mother is calling something from the kitchen. The room is full of noise and warmth and Sunday afternoon and I am standing in the middle of it holding salad tongs with the blood rushing very loudly in my ears.

He knows.

The thought arrives flat and certain. He knows exactly who I am and he has known from the moment he first looked at me across that rooftop and he stood there all night and let it happen anyway. He held out his hand and let me take it and he never said a word.

My face is doing something. I don't know what. I hope it is doing nothing.

Caleb finishes shaking my father's hand and turns to me.

He is completely calm. Completely composed. There is nothing in his expression that shouldn't be there. No flicker of guilt, no trace of recognition, no crack in the surface of him anywhere. He is a man meeting his best friend's sister for the first time on a Sunday afternoon and that is all he is.

He buttons his jacket.

He extends his hand.

"Nice to finally meet you, Maya."

His voice is even. Warm. Perfectly calibrated to the moment.

I look at his hand.

I look at his face.

I look at the hand again.

Somewhere behind me my mother has appeared with the chicken and my father is asking Caleb something about the new firm and Derek is pulling out a chair and the room is moving around me like a normal Sunday, like nothing has happened, like the ground has not just opened up quietly beneath my feet.

I take his hand.

His grip is firm and brief and he lets go cleanly, n

I pulled my hand back.

"You too,"

I said

My voice comes out steady.

I have absolutely no idea how.