“Uh-huh.” She made her way to the small nook she’d created for the boys’ school backpacks and shoes and began to straighten, fingers tight with tension.
“Can you look at me when you answer me?”
“Not a chance.”
“Do you suppose hidin’ in the boys’ backpacks is going to keep me from asking you probing questions about last night and where you got to until I finally passed out at one in the mornin’?”
“I was hopin’ they’d act as some sort of Dixie-off.” She held up the backpack over her head and danced it in the air with a bounce.
“Not likely,” Dixie said from behind her, grabbing the backpack and setting it aside. She took Em’s hand and walked her to the couch. “Sit. I’ll make you a cup of coffee. You put together your explanation story for me while I do it. Tie up those loose ends and all.” She grinned at Em before setting her mug down on the coffee table and wandering off to the kitchen.
She loved her kitchen. It was the first thing in the house she’d attacked when Clifton left. It was rustic black granite countertops and lovingly antiqued ivory cabinets, a soft-gray-and-muted-black-veined ceramic backsplash with diamond tiled patterns in cream she’d designed herself.
The shiny silver appliances were her gift to herself after Dixie hired her. The stove being her first love. A six-burner gas cooktop splayed out atop her center island and a wall oven with a digital timer set to change the temperature to cook the meals she dropped into the mouth of it before leaving for work.
The laminate flooring, a grainy dark wood, more labor and mostly love, with coils beneath to heat it, was, to date, her crowning glory. Her kitchen said, Em was here.
Like her constructional footprint was all that was necessary for her to finally be heard. Like the grout she’d mixed sang her name when she’d stirred batches and batches of it. Like the floor she’d laid, ruining saw blade after saw blade until she got it right, was her rebel cry for independence.
The peace that single room brought her, the careful choices she’d made for the colors meant to bellow, “This here be Emmaline’s Kitchen—made from hours of splinters and sweat and a two-day rental on a wet saw that ended up being a weeklong four-hundred-dollar bill. See the bloodshed on the corners of the wood-grained cabinet right near the refrigerator. Look at how the wall oven glistens with the tears of the fair Emmaline as she struggled to hook it up all while she sobbed and doused everyone within earshot with some uncharacteristically foul language. Know this before ye enter!”
The kitchen was her statement. Her new beginning.
As Dixie made her way around that very kitchen, gathering up a mug for Em, she asked again, “How’re those loose ends coming, Em?”
Em tucked her hands into her bathrobe, sinking as far into the couch as she could. What could she say? I got home late because Jax Hawthorne did things to me the likes of which I can never define while I enjoyed every second of it—in a car—er, Jeep—like some common tart?
Dixie held the blue mosaic mug out to her before settling into the chair opposite the couch. She tucked a rust-colored pillow to her belly and sighed. “Your couch is awful. My back will never be the same.”
Neither will my vagina. Oh. Mercy. “You were sleeping so soundly, I didn’t want to wake you. So I texted Caine and told him you were spending the night. I hope that’s all right.”
She massaged the back of her neck and grinned. “Thank you. Now no more avoiding this. You ready?”
“With my story?”
“Yep.”
“Why does there have to be a story attached to me coming home late?”
Dixie gave her the saucy “whatever” look and shrugged. “There doesn’t.”
Em narrowed her eyes at her friend and pursed her lips. “Oh, there does, too. Don’t you try to guilt me into telling you with your pretend indifference.”
“Is there any other way?”
“We went shopping.”
Dixie popped her lips and tilted her head to nod. “Shopping can take hours and hours. I know. I’m a shopper. No bigger shopper ’n me. Why, sometimes, when I’m looking at paint swatches and bed linens, I make an entire weekend of it. Seventy-two hours of nonstop color wheels and Egyptian cotton.” She sipped her coffee, letting her feet dangle over the arm of the chair.
“You’re mocking me.”
“I am.”
“I can’t talk about it.”
“I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do. Let’s just sit quietly together and enjoy the peace of this brand-new Saturday before the boys wake up. I promised to take them to the big house and let Sanjeev spoil them rotten with grilled cheese and ice-cream sundaes for lunch, then some camel time with Toe. You know, just in case you didn’t make it home today after all that shopping.” Dixie hunkered down into the chair, letting her head fall back and closing her eyes.
While Em squirmed. “I can’t talk about it.”