“That doesn’t sound like you. Are you upset?”
“As long as he doesn’t howl, I’m fine.”
“I’m not talking about Charlie, I’m talking about the baby. That must have been tough. Are you doing okay? Talk to me.”
“Nothing to talk about. The baby is fine, I’m fine, Seth’s fine. Everyone is fine.” Fliss stared into the mirror, relieved her sister couldn’t see her. Her face still looked a little puffy.
This, she thought, is what a liar looks like.
“You know I’m here if you need to talk to someone.”
“Thanks, but there’s nothing I need to talk about.” The last thing she wanted was for Harriet to worry about her. Fortunately hiding her feelings was easy, or it had been until last night.
She felt a prickle of annoyance.
Why had Seth come looking for her? Why hadn’t he just left her alone? If he’d guessed how upset she was, and clearly he had, then why couldn’t he have left her to deal with her emotions her own way?
Given a little more time, she would have pulled herself together and no one would have been any the wiser.
“I’ll be two minutes,” she told Charlie, and stepped into the shower. Two minutes of needle-sharp hot water helped a little. Not a lot, but enough to help her face the day.
She took Charlie and Hero out for a quick walk, and when she returned her grandmother was already seated at the table, sipping her coffee.
“You’re up early, Grams.” Fliss fed the two dogs.
“So are you. Especially given how late you were last night.”
“You’re waiting up for me? I’m a little too old for that, don’t you think?”
“You’re never too old to enjoy the fact that someone cares about you.”
“Good point.” Sunlight poured through the windows, and Fliss could hear the faint crash of surf through the open windows. The fresh air did more for her aching head than all the Tylenol on the planet. “I walked the dogs. Came across Hero on the beach so I went to investigate.” She put a slice of toast in the toaster and wandered to the fridge. “Turned out Matilda had her baby.”
“I heard. I thought it wasn’t due for another few weeks?”
“It wasn’t, but nature thought differently.” She pulled out butter and a jar of her grandmother’s homemade plum jam.
For as long as she could remember, there had always been a jar of her grandmother’s plum jam in the cupboard.
“Toast is burning,” her grandmother said casually, and Fliss sprinted across the kitchen, cursing.
“It’s toast! How can I burn toast?”
“Because you were thinking about other things.”
Fliss wasn’t about to argue with that. She’d been thinking about Seth. The baby. Matilda. The baby. Seth. The baby. Seth.
Seth, Seth, Seth.
“Damn.” She retrieved the charred toast. “Looks like something spewed from the center of a volcano.”
“Turn the temperature dial down. Start again. Cooking requires you to stay in the moment. That’s why it’s relaxing. So you drove her to the clinic?”
“No time.” Instead of throwing out the toast, she scraped away the top layer and spread the surface with butter and plum jam. “She was having the baby right there. This jam is good. You could sell it and make a fortune.” She chewed, savoring the sweetness and the flavor. The taste took her straight back to those long summers where she and Harriet had filled baskets to the brim with plums and apples. Fliss had eaten them, right there and then, with the sun beating down and the juice running down her chin.
Harriet had preferred to save hers to cook with their grandmother.
They’d spend hours preparing the fruit, stirring, testing and tasting until finally pouring the jam into jars that Harriet had labeled in her neat, careful writing.