Chapter 78: After

POV: Avalon Pierce

He made dinner that night, he had gone to the store in the late afternoon while Selene was on a call with Amara and came back with things that required actual cooking rather than just heat.

He wasn’t a good cook.

He cooked anyway because some things required the specific physicality of standing at a stove making something with your hands. Of being useful in a way that was uncomplicated.

Selene appeared in the kitchen doorway at seven.

She looked at the stove, the various pots and the general ambitious chaos of someone who had committed to a recipe without fully considering what the recipe involved.

“What is this?” she said.

“Dinner.”

“What kind of dinner?”

“The kind that requires forty minutes and three pots apparently.”

She came and stood beside him. 

“You’re making Lasagna,” she said.

“Attempting.”

“Why?”

He thought about how to answer that.

“You told me once that your mother made it when something needed to be marked,” he said. “When something deserved acknowledgment.” He stirred something that probably needed stirring. “Elena deserves acknowledgment.”

Selene was very still beside him.

He kept stirring.

“I looked up the recipe this afternoon,” he said. “It’s apparently straightforward and I’m discovering that straightforward is relative.”

She said nothing for a moment.

Then she reached past him and adjusted the heat.

“You had it too high,” she said.

“I suspected.”

“And the tomatoes need more time to steam”

“The recipe didn’t mention that.”

“The recipes assume you already know.”

He looked at her.

Her eyes were wet but she was almost smiling.

He handed her the spoon.

She took it.

They stood at the stove together. Her stirring, watching, and handing things when she asked and staying out of the way when she didn’t.

The kitchen filled with the smell of it.

They ate at the table.

Selene had called Maya while he was finalizing the lasagna. 

She arrived ten minutes later with wine she’d grabbed from her apartment with the energy of someone who had understood from Selene’s voice that this was the kind of evening you showed up for without being given the full explanation first.

He’d set a third place without discussing it.

They ate.

He told them what Selene had told him, because Maya is family and she deserves to know and because saying it out loud again felt like the right thing, like Elena deserved to be spoken of by more than two people in a room.

Maya listened without interrupting.

When he finished she was quiet for a moment.

“She was held,” Maya said.

“Yes,” Selene said.

Maya looked at her plate, at Selene, then at Avalon.

“Someone chose to hold her,” she said. “A stranger, on a night when you were alone.” Her voice was rough. “She wasn’t alone.”

Selene reached across the table.

Maya took her hand.

He watched them.

Two sisters at a table in his apartment with their hands linked and the remains of lasagna between them.

He was glad he’d made dinner.

He was glad Maya had come.

He was glad the table felt like a place where serious things happened because this was serious and it deserved the space.

After dinner Maya washed up.

Selene sat at the table with her wine.

He sat beside her.

“Dr. Ruth,” Selene said. “I want to ask her to be part of the foundation.”

“Tell me why.”

“For one she has spent thirty years documenting a gap between what should happen and the foundation should be made of people who already know what it’s for, not people who need convincing.”

He thought about that.

“She’d bring credibility to the medical ethics component,” he said.

“I’m not thinking about credibility.”

“I know. I’m adding it.” He looked at her. “I think you should call her.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tonight if you want.”

“Tomorrow.” She picked up her wine. “ I just want to be here tonight.”

He understood that.

Maya left at ten.

She hugged Selene for a long time at the door.

Then she hugged him.

Which she hadn’t done before. Not properly. The sideways half hugs of someone who expressed warmth through proximity rather than contact.

This was different.

He hugged her back.

She pulled away and looked at him with the expression she’d been wearing since Accra.

 “The food was actually good,” she said.

“Don’t sound surprised.”

“I’m surprised,” she said. “It’s fine to be surprised.”

She left.

He stood in the doorway for a moment after.

Then went back inside.

Selene was at the window.

He came and stood beside her.

“I want to plant something,” Selene said. “In the garden at the foundation offices when we have them. Something that blooms in March. Something that can’t be classified as something it wasn’t.”

He looked at her.

At this woman who had carried something alone for ten years and was slowly, carefully, learning to carry it differently.

“We’ll plant it together,” he said.

She leaned against him.

He put his arm around her.