“Can I have one?” Landon asks her.
“Of course,” she says. “I’m leaving them for the night crowd to finish off. Otherwise Mulder will eat all of them and turn into the Mask by bedtime.”
Landon leans over to pluck a pastel de nata from the center. “The Mask?”
“Young people.” Ashleigh grabs her green pleather bag and eyes me. “Thanks. For . . . whatever those things are.”
“Pastéis de nata,” I tell her. “Portugal’s famous breakfast treat.”
I can’t tell if she’s caught off guard in a good way, or just confused. Maybe she doesn’t even remember our conversation about Portugal.
“And it’s my pleasure,” I add.
She nods, an acknowledgment with no visible emotion attached to it, then jogs her bag higher and leaves.
An empty apartment greets me, again.
All my life, this moment, this feeling has been a constant: doing homework at a kitchen table while Mom was at night class, planning programs on the rug while Peter took a client out for drinks, sitting on the bleachers at school while every other kid’s parent showed up to take them home, Dad already halfway to a sound bath that a Trader Joe’s cashier invited him to.
Maybe it’s time to just make peace with it. Maybe certain people are destined to be solitary creatures. Maybe no matter how hard I try, I’ll end up back here.
I drop my bag, kick off my shoes, and shuffle into the dining room. The apartment has been thoroughly cleaned since this morning.
The breakfast table is cleared of junk mail and water glasses and bags from the pharmacy. Now there’s just a small white box wrapped in gold twine, and beside it, a scrap of paper. In extraordinarily messy handwriting: Sorry I missed you.
A wave of déjà vu rocks me.
It was easy to toss Dad’s note in the trash. I knew exactly what to expect. With this, I can’t help hoping for something more.
I slide the twine off, pop the box open, and start to laugh.
Fudge.
A box of fudge. So underwhelming as to border on absurd: Sorry I missed you, here’s some chocolate and condensed milk.
But the funniest part is, I did the exact same thing to Ashleigh.
The hysteric laughter is about to tumble into outright crying, when, miracle of all ill-timed miracles, my phone rings with a call from Dad.
“Is this a joke?” I demand of the universe and/or empty apartment.
I don’t want to talk to him.
I don’t want to talk to anyone—I’d even rejected a call from Mom on the walk home, because I hadn’t decided yet whether to tell her about the Maryland job or not. I told myself I didn’t want to get her hopes up, but the truth is, I don’t want to get mine any higher than they already are.
I just need to get through the interview and the Read-a-thon, and see how everything shakes out.
I send Dad’s call to voice mail and pull up my Read-a-thon checklist, desperate for a distraction, and scan the list of supplies we still need.
Then I start dragging the remaining wedding stuff out of the closet, sorting out what I can repurpose for the fundraiser—napkins, plates, flameless tea lights—and what I should just donate. The rest—the dress and everything else sellable—is still at Ashleigh’s, one more problem I can’t think about right now.
I take a quick break to order dinner, then dive back into sorting and packing until I hear a pounding at the door, the dinner I have no appetite for.
“You can leave it there!” I shout, jumping up and sprinting down the hallway. I look around for a sweater I can pull on over my sports bra. “I already paid and tipped when I ordered!”
No answer.
Then the scrape of a throat being cleared.
“It’s Peter.”
I honestly almost blurt out Peter who? while pulling my cardigan off the coat hook and onto my body.
Then it clicks, like a bullet into a barrel.
Peter.
I open the door, half expecting to have my only workable theory disproven. There’s no way Peter Collins is here, on my doorstep.
Except he is.
“Hi, Daphne,” he says, with a woeful smile. “Can I come in?”
“Um . . .”
“Just for a minute,” he promises, his green eyes glossy and brow furrowed in that contrite-yet-hurt way that used to make my kneecaps melt. Not that he had much occasion to use it.
