Hazel Barron hadn't finished, and tacked on, almost lazily, "My sister said yes back then. She even said they'd buy a place together."
Hazel had been young, but the whole business with Grace Barron had been so deliciously gossip-worthy that the adults around her worked it over like a chew toy. Memory, rubbed to a shine, stuck fast. Hazel remembered every last bit.
Oakley Ponciano stared at the bite of food balanced on her chopsticks. Something small shifted in her expression—almost nothing, a grain of sand, but there.
Hazel saw the change and knew she'd landed the hit; a sudden fizz of triumph lit her chest. She'd been swallowing her temper for what felt like hours. Now she'd located a crack in the armor and, of course, she honed the needle to the finest point she could and pressed.
Strangely, the food seemed to bloom on her tongue—better than before, brighter, salted by mischief.
For Oakley, the opposite: an appetite dampened in an instant. Even the abalone, which had been so supple, turned obstinate in her mouth, like chewing a thick rubber band, resilience without reward.
Oakley smoothed her face, rebuilt her composure, then turned to Grace and smiled as if nothing in her had flinched. "So you two were that close?" she asked lightly.
Grace lifted her head.
She had met Evelyn Luke in the first year of middle school. Home hadn't been easy then—air like damp wool, the constant hush of being unwelcome. Grace went quiet to survive. She rarely spoke.
She was braced—literally. Tall and awkward, iron flashing over teeth. She didn't come into herself until after graduation. Before that, she lived on the classroom's rim where desks go to be forgotten.
People pointed and whispered. The whispering did not bother to be quiet. It curled around the door just as she stepped through it; it floated up as she left. She learned to recognize the hiss of her own name when it wasn't meant for her.
They called her everything but a person. "String-bean," "Tin Grin," "Lone Ranger," "Weirdo."
They laughed until the desks themselves objected, wood creaking beneath the slap of palms, the whole row trembling with it.
And then—Evelyn.
Daughter of the principal. The one who read the announcements at Monday assembly. The girl everyone watched without meaning to. When she transferred into Grace's class, there was exactly one empty seat: beside Grace. They became seatmates, then shadows stitched together, inseparable and inexplicably easy. And by Evelyn's simple proximity, the laughter dried up. No one was quite brave enough to jeer at the principal's daughter's friend.
In a closeness like that, not being close was impossible.
Grace was good to Evelyn in the way some people are good by nature and some are good by choice. Whatever she had—stickers, biscuits, a new pen—she pushed it first into Evelyn's hands. Whatever happened to Evelyn belonged to Grace within seconds, a problem absorbed and solved. Time did the knitting: eventually they felt, as Hazel would later joke, "like two legs sewn into the same one-piece."
Once, when Evelyn came over, someone admired her out loud—how pretty she was, what lucky boy would someday marry her. Evelyn answered before she thought: "I don't want to marry anyone. I want to spend my life with Grace."
Grace had been slow to wake to such things. Back then, the words landed like a leaf on water—no splash, only widening rings. She'd said, after a moment of unusual seriousness, "Then we'll buy a house together."
The room exploded with laughter. Someone thumped her shoulder and said, "You're just kids. Wait till you're twenty—your mind will change."
Hazel hadn't lied. Those things were true. But they belonged to then.
Grace's voice was even. "Teenage girls, you know how it is. When you're that close, there's no mine or yours. I think a lot of us imagined holding hands with our best friend and taking on the world."
Oakley kept eating.
And she had to admit—it made sense. Hadn't she, once upon a time, been the same? Done too much for a girl-friend or three when feelings were at their heaviest? Dreamed, not of a white dress, but of a private kingdom built with a best friend's laughter and shared keys?
Back then, when someone teased, "So what kind of boys do you like?" she would lift her chin and fire back, "I'm not getting married. I'm spending my life with my girl."
Girls clustered after school and let their conversations drift from "What's for dinner?" to "I'm not getting married," "Me neither," "I hate kids," "Same, never," until the chorus settled into, "Then let's just live together."
What did it prove? Nothing, really. It was a time. A tide. None of them yet knew the shapes of their own hearts.
Oakley laughed, pushed the odd mood aside, and tilted a look at Grace. "So you were a kid too. Like me."
"Of course," Grace said, spooning a ladle of soup into her bowl. "Kids think the same, more or less. Even straight girls said it. Evelyn's straight—she dated a guy last year. They broke up, though."
"I get it." Oakley's shoulders loosened. "We all said some nonsense when we were young."
And yet—slowly, almost sheepishly—she noticed something else. Her moods had begun to fasten themselves to Grace's like two leaves caught on the same stream. The tug, the lift, the dip—hers moved with Grace's.
Hazel, seeing her spark sputter out, clamped her teeth around a drumstick and bit down. She said nothing more.
After dinner they all sat and talked awhile. When the clock in the hall edged toward four, Grace turned to Oakley. "We should go. Evelyn said she's about done. If we head out now, we can meet for dinner."
"Okay." Oakley stood, toyed with the lock of hair spilling over her shoulder, and pointed upstairs. "Ten minutes to fix my face. Where are our suitcases?"
"The bags are already in your room," the housekeeper said, materializing with her perfect timing.
"Oh," Oakley murmured, blinking. "Which one's ours?"
"It's easier if I show you," the housekeeper said, hands folded, already turning.
"Thanks."
Ten minutes later, Oakley came down with a soft, lived-in face—light makeup that suited her clothes, tender and clean as morning.
Grace called out to her family, and the two of them slipped into the garage. Grace opened a car door. They climbed in together. Doors shut. GPS on. Tires rolled over the threshold, and the world changed by degrees.
Here wasn't as warm as Ravenwood, but better than Skylark by a fair stretch. The trees on either side of the road stood straight-backed and green, stubbornly alive. Even in winter the sky stayed heartbreak blue, like a sheet of waterglass hung with invisible wire above their heads, reflecting the edges of everything until the world felt scrubbed.
They threaded a few bends and dropped into the city.
At their stop, they parked and stepped out. Ahead stood a restaurant with a plain face and a proud sign: He's Kitchen, the lettered curls a little theatrical, a little old-fashioned.
Grace had come here as a child. The taste had followed her through the years, like a song she hummed without knowing it. A fancy hotel had once offered to buy the recipe, rumor said, but the owner refused—family recipes are lodestars, not commodities. They pass downward, not outward.
Old places carry their own weather. Word of mouth did the rest. People came from the next town over, then the next. It wasn't even evening yet, but the place pulsed with conversation and cutlery, warmth filling the space like steam.
They almost collided with a server balancing three plates. Grace eased Oakley to the side by the elbow and, lifting her head, saw her—Evelyn Luke—by the window, tucked into a corner seat.
Evelyn had a small, tapering face, features delicate as if whittled with care. Today she wore a camel wool coat, and her tea-brown hair slid in a sheet over her shoulders. She looked impossibly harmless. Like the neighbor's little sister, grown up but never hard.
"That's Evelyn?" Oakley asked, curious despite herself.
"Mm," Grace said. "Come on."
They sidestepped a child blasting forward with a water gun and reached the table. Grace leaned in and said, "We're here."
Evelyn looked up first at Grace—smiling—and then at Oakley. Her surprise flickered and was gone so quickly it might have been a trick of light.
She exited her chat screen, set her phone aside, and reached over with a courteous hand. "Hi. I'm Evelyn. First time we've met. Be gentle with me."
"Hi." Oakley's smile was cool and easy as she took her hand.