“What are you laughing about?” Maria demanded, putting her hands on her hips. “You are learning, too. Both of you get dressed and be back in this kitchen in ten minutes.”
Lauren ran upstairs, changed out of her flannel nightgown and into a pair of black leggings and an old Fircrest Bulldogs T-shirt. When she skidded back into the kitchen, Maria looked up at her.
Lauren stood there, smiling uncertainly. “What should I do?”
Maria walked over to her. Shaking her head, she made a small tsking sound. “You are too young to have such sad eyes,” she said quietly.
Lauren didn’t know what to say to that.
Maria grabbed an apron out of the box and handed it to Lauren. “Here. Put this on.”
Lauren did as she was told.
“Now come here.” Maria led the way to the counter and began pulling ingredients out of the box. By the time Angie made it back to the kitchen, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, there was a mound of flour on the butcher block and a metal bowl full of eggs alongside it.
“Pasta,” Angie said, frowning.
For the next hour, they worked side by side. Maria taught them how to scoop out the center of the flour and fill the hole with just the right amount of eggs, then to work the dough carefully so it didn’t get tough. While Lauren was learning to roll the dough into sheets, Angie went into the living room and turned on the music.
“That’s better,” she said, dancing back into the room.
Maria handed Lauren a metal sunburst with a handle. “Now cut that pasta into strips, maybe two inches square.”
Lauren frowned. “I might screw up. Maybe Angie should try.”
Angie laughed at that. “Yeah. I’m certainly the better choice.”
Maria touched Lauren’s face gently. “You know what happens if you make a mistake?”
“What?”
“We roll it out and try again. Cut.”
Lauren picked up the scalloped pastry wheel and began cutting the pasta into squares. No chemistry lab had ever been undertaken with more care.
“You see this, Angie?” Maria said. “Your girl has the gift.”
Your girl.
For the rest of the morning, those two words stayed with Lauren, warmed her. As they filled the tortellini and finished the pasta, she found herself smiling. Laughing sometimes, for no reason.
She hated to see the cooking lesson come to an end.
“Well,” Maria said at last, “I must go now. My garden is calling to me. I have planting to do.”
Angie laughed. “Thank God.” She tossed a wink at Lauren. “I think I’ll stick with the restaurant’s leftovers.”
“Someday you will be sorry, Angela,” Maria sniffed, “that you ignored your heritage.”
Angie put an arm around her mother, held her close. “I’m just kidding, Mama. I appreciate the lesson. Tomorrow I’ll get out a cookbook and try something on my own. How would that be?”
“Good.”
Maria hugged them both, said good-bye, and left the house. Lauren went to the sink and started washing the dishes. Angie sidled up beside her. They washed and dried in the easy rhythm they’d created recently.
When the dishes were dried and put away, Angie said, “I need to run down to Help-Your-Neighbor House. I have a meeting with the director. The coat drive went so well, we’re trying to come up with another promotion.”
“Oh.”
Lauren stood there, drying her wet hands, as Angie hurried through the house and then left. The door slammed shut; in the yard, a car started up.
Lauren went to the window and stared out, watching Angie drive away. Behind her, the CD changed. Bruce Springsteen’s gravelly voice started up.
Baby, we were born to run …
She spun away from the window and ran for the stereo, clicking the music off hard. A sharp silence descended. It was so quiet that she thought she could hear the tapping of Conlan’s fingers on the laptop upstairs, but that was impossible.
She tried not to think about her mother, but now that was impossible, too.
“I thought kids your age loved the Boss,” Conlan said from behind her.
She turned around slowly. “Hey,” she said.
In the weeks since the wedding, Lauren had tried to keep her distance from Conlan. They lived in the same house, of course, so it wasn’t easy. But she sensed a hesitation in him, an unwillingness to get to know her.
She kept her back to the window and stared at him, twisting her hands together nervously. “Angie went to town. She’ll be back in a while.”
“I know.”
Of course she would have told her husband. Lauren felt like an idiot for having said anything.
Conlan crossed the room, came up closer. “You’re nervous around me.”
“You’re nervous around me.”
He smiled. “Touché. I’m just worried, that’s all. Angie is … fragile sometimes. She leads with her heart.”
“And you think I’ll hurt her.”
“Not purposely, no.”
Lauren had no answer to that, so she changed the subject. “Do you want to be a father?”