The Glass Kitchen: A Novel of Sisters

Thirty

PORTIA’S LIFE WAS falling into place. The money was coming in for The Glass Kitchen. The sisters were working together in a way that gave her hope that it was a good idea. And she wanted to believe there could be more between her and Gabriel Kane.

Which meant she couldn’t put off making Gabriel’s Meal any longer.

She remembered her grandmother’s meal. She remembered what turned out to be Cordelia’s meal, which she’d had to make when she woke up with the knowing after moving to Manhattan. Both had foretold bad news.

But there had been good meals, too, she reminded herself. Meals that had saved her sisters. Meals that had helped people since she had been cooking these last several weeks. Though, really, each of those instances had been the result of single items. A pie. A pot of French stew. A soup. A bag of spicy chocolates.

A tremor of nerves raced along her skin. Entire meals coming to mind had been few and far between.

She wrote out the menu she had seen in her head. Fried chicken, sweet jalapeño mustard, mashed potatoes, slaw, biscuits, and pie—strawberry pie with fresh whipped cream piled high. Her hands shook as she started to prepare. Once she opened the floodgates to the meal, a relentless, nearly strangling need filled her.

What scared her most was the pie. It was her grandmother’s decadent concoction—a definite sign. But, again, of what?

Next, Portia started a list—not of ingredients, but of people whom she felt certain she needed to invite. Powering up her computer, she composed a short e-mail.

Dear Friends and Family,

I’m preparing a meal tonight at 7:30. No need to bring anything. I hope you all can join me. Love, Portia

Just that.

She sent the e-mail to Cordelia, Olivia, Gabriel, Miranda, and Ariel. However reluctant she was, she also knew she had to send it to Gabriel’s mother and brother.

The last two guests made her the most nervous. Why would she need to invite them? Was this meal a way to start building a connection between Gabriel’s family and hers? Or proof that there was too much distance between their two worlds to cross?

As she always did, Portia went to Fairway to pick up the ingredients she didn’t have. The chicken, the cabbage, the potatoes. Milk and butter.

The strawberry pie again gave her pause; strawberries weren’t in season. Was she setting out to fail before she ever got started? But then she remembered she was in New York City, a place where anything could be found at any time. Strawberries were in season somewhere, and they made their way without fail to the city that had everything.

As soon as Portia returned home, she got to work. She didn’t check the answering machine. She didn’t check e-mail for responses. If she had learned anything about the knowing, it was that whatever was to come was beyond her control. Guests would come or not. Once the invitation was issued, nothing she could say would make a difference.

Before she started cooking, she raced out and got flowers, though her instinct to buy freesia, delphinium, and hydrangea didn’t offer any insight to what was coming.

She took great care in setting the table, pulling two smaller tables together in the living room. She added an antique linen tablecloth that had belonged to her aunt, candles, and the flowers in the center. By the time she had shopped and done the prep work, she had only three hours before the guests were due to arrive. The apartment was ready.

Now for the food.

The sense of peace came first. A smile broke out on her face, and she even laughed. She felt better and better by the minute.

First, the chicken, filling a brown paper bag with flour and seasoning. Then the potatoes, peeling and cutting, putting them on to boil. The apartment grew hot, and she wiped her hands on her apron, then raced into the living room to open the back French doors.

She mixed up the biscuit dough and set it aside in one of Evie’s old mixing bowls. The pie came next. She cut up brilliant red strawberries and sugared them, a feather-light crust, whipped the cream, and put it in the refrigerator. She would have to fry the chicken after she bathed, but that couldn’t be helped if she wanted the crispy outside to be perfect.

Then she took a bath, soaking in lavender, and dressed with care. A crisp white cotton blouse and floral skirt, with low heels. At the last minute, she found a pair of old pearls that had been Evie’s. “This is the right thing to do,” she told her reflection.

By the time she returned to the kitchen, she had only thirty minutes left. She mashed the potatoes, mixing in more butter than was good for a person.

Her front door opened, startling her. How had the time gone so fast?

“What’s going on?” Olivia called out.

Her sister wore workout clothes, hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. She took one look at Portia and stopped in her tracks. “Really, what’s going on? Nice clothes. Your hair. And you’re wearing makeup.” She narrowed her eyes. “Your e-mail only said dinner. Who all is coming?”

The bell rang, and Cordelia walked in, dressed in a casual way that wasn’t Cordelia at all.

“Why didn’t you answer my e-mail?” Cordelia said. Then, like Olivia, she took in Portia’s attire. “What’s going on?”

Cordelia glanced back into the living room and saw the table settings. The two older sisters exchanged a wary glance.

“You had to make a meal,” Olivia said, her voice hard.

“I hate this!” Cordelia said.

Olivia scoffed. “How is it possible that you, who pushed Portia back into the knowing, are acting like this is a surprise? You know the weird meals you get with the knowing. It’s not her fault.”

“Look at me!” Cordelia exclaimed, gesturing to her clothes. “Based on that table, this is a dinner for more than just the three of us. I look like a bag lady.” She glared at Portia. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

“You should have known,” Olivia said. “The e-mail said ‘Dear Friends and Family.’ When was the last time Portia had us over for dinner with that kind of an invitation? I should have known.”

Portia’s smile flatlined, her heart leaping into her throat.

The bell rang again and Ariel burst in. “Miranda can’t come. She got Dad to let her stay with a friend.”

More bad news. Miranda was supposed to be there.

Ariel didn’t look any happier than Portia felt. But before Portia could ask about Miranda, the smell of burning potatoes hit her.

“Oh, no!”

She was barely aware that Helen Kane and Anthony were at the door before she dashed into the kitchen. She couldn’t think of anything right then, other than saving the meal.

Thirty-one

ARIEL SLIPPED OUT of Portia’s living room, escaping the suddenly crowded apartment, the smell of weird, burned potatoes stinging her nose. She snuck out the back door, then up three brick steps leading to the town house’s garden. She curled up in an oversized sweater she’d found up on the storage floor, one that must have been her dad’s. She tucked herself out of sight, huddling against the growing cold, her thick wool, multicolored socks with toes shoved into a wild pair of boots that she had been certain Portia would love. Except Portia had been too worried about her cooking to notice.

She tucked her chin against her knees. She was starting to feel as if she was really losing it. Sure, she had beaten back the Shrink’s questions and not spilled her guts. But it didn’t mean she’d stopped thinking. In fact, she couldn’t stop thinking, and all her thoughts were weird. Like why was her sister being so awful.

“Miranda,” she said to the empty garden, “why can’t you just give Dad a break?”

Like that would work. Miranda would just slam the bedroom door in her face.

Plus, she didn’t even feel like talking to Miranda, because she felt a little guilty about reading her journal. Which she was now mostly doing to learn anything she could about her family. The problem with that was that every time she dug Miranda’s diary out from underneath the mattress, she found out that her sister was getting deeper and deeper into trouble. Miranda was determined to be friends with the popular kids, and that meant doing whatever the creep Dustin wanted her to do. But it wasn’t as if Ariel could do anything with that information. She wasn’t a snitch. She wasn’t a spy.

But, seriously, how was it possible Miranda could be so stupid?

Voices coming from inside Portia’s apartment caught her attention.

“Mother, just tell Gabriel to give me the money!”

“What, so you can leave?”

Ariel peeked back in through the door and saw her uncle and grandmother standing not two feet inside the living room. No one else was in sight. The sisters had have been in the kitchen. Ugh. The last person Ariel wanted to talk to was her uncle, but still, her grandmother’s question made her curious. Uncle Anthony wanted to leave? Already?

“You’ve been gone for over a year, Anthony. Why can’t you stay and get a job here in the city?”

“I don’t need my mother or brother to take care of me, or make decisions for me. I’m a grown man!”

“Then act like one!”

Ariel couldn’t see Uncle Anthony’s face because his back was to her, but he must have been really mad, because suddenly Nana was hanging on his arm in a massively pathetic way.

“I’m sorry, Anthony. I didn’t mean it. I just wish you wouldn’t stay away so long.”

Nana made a sad weepy sound that almost—almost—made Ariel feel sorry for her, except the woman was so completely awful to Dad and not to Anthony. It wasn’t fair.

“I feel that the only reason you come back is to get money from Gabriel.”

“He owes me!”

Nana sighed. “Fine. Then sign his papers and he’ll pay you.”

“A pittance. No thanks. I’m not leaving until he pays up, big-time. And not until he hands this apartment over to me. That was the deal. The money and the apartment. It was supposed to be mine! I saw the papers, for God’s sake. He’s already bought the damned place. All he has to do is sign it over to me!”

“Keep your voice down! You promised to stay quiet until he got it worked out with Portia.”

Ariel frowned. The apartment was supposed to be Anthony’s?

“What are you talking about?”

But it wasn’t Nana or Uncle Anthony who spoke this time. Ariel practically fell into the apartment as she swung her head toward the kitchen. Portia stood there, frozen, holding a smoking pan of burned chicken with two oven mitts, her brow furrowed as she looked back and forth between Nana and Anthony.

“What are you talking about?” Portia repeated. “The apartment is mine, not Gabriel’s, and certainly not yours, Anthony.”

Only then did Ariel notice that Portia wasn’t the only person who had shown up unexpectedly in the living room. Her dad stood just inside the front door, looking totally like he was going to kill someone.

Thirty-two

THE MEAL was ruined.

The chicken had burned; the mashed potatoes were a sea of soupy lumps; the biscuits were charred rocks of hardened dough.

Portia held the pan of burned chicken and tried to understand what Anthony was saying. She took in the fury on Gabriel’s face and the guilty delight on his brother’s as they both looked at her.

“That’s right, Portia,” Anthony said, swiveling his head to smile at his older brother. “When Gabriel bought the apartment, he promised it to me.”

“Damn it, Anthony,” Gabriel bit out.

Portia blinked as she tried to make sense of it. She looked at Gabriel. “But the apartment isn’t yours. I didn’t go through with the sale.”

Gabriel dragged a hand through his hair, and suddenly the pieces came together like a Rubik’s Cube settling into place.

Her mouth fell open. “That’s impossible! I never signed the documents.”

He stared at her, and she could see the way he willed things to be different. “The papers were signed, Portia. And notarized.”

Her knees went weak, recognizing the truth. Suddenly, a lot of things made sense. Gabriel demanding to know what she was doing in the apartment. All the times he had started to say something, only to cut himself off.

Robert must have gone through with the sale by forging her signature.

Portia felt sick, angry, and betrayed. What’s more, with each piece of the puzzle that fell into place, this meal made more and more sense.

Burned chicken for betrayal by Robert, who had not only sold the only thing she owned, but had also kept the money.

Soupy potatoes for a relationship with Gabriel that had no true bond.

Coleslaw she had mixed with dressing that went bad for a Glass Kitchen in New York, a sour idea from the start.

Rock-hard rolls for a stubborn woman who had repeatedly refused to make a meal that would have led her much earlier to a greater truth—the reality that when she had seen Gabriel, and the shimmering images of fried chicken and sweet jalapeño mustard had come to her, it had foretold disaster between her and Gabriel Kane.

“Welcome to my world, babe,” Anthony said with a laugh. “My brother does what he wants, when he wants, regardless of how many people he hurts in the process.”

“Fuck,” Gabriel ground out.

“Is that why you let her stay here, big brother? So you could fuck her?”

Portia’s head jerked up just in time to see Gabriel fly across the room. Anthony’s eyes went wide.

“Gabriel, no!” their mother shouted.

Gabriel ignored her, jerking Anthony up and throwing him against the wall. “Damn you!” he roared.

Anthony lunged back at Gabriel, screaming. But he was no match for the bigger man. Gabriel had him pinned to the wall in a moment. “You leave Portia out of this.”

“What in the world is going on here?”

Portia jerked around. A man she had never seen before stood at the open front door.

The newcomer’s face was wrinkled with distaste. “I’m a New York City inspector conducting an unannounced property visit. Our office was notified that someone is illegally running a retail establishment out of a ground-floor residential building.” He glanced around. “Based on the sign in the window and the posted hours, I’d say the report is correct.” His mouth twisted. “A restaurant and, what, a fight club?”

The inspector walked straight in and began snapping photos—of The Glass Kitchen sign, the daily menu. He also snapped the shocked faces and Anthony’s bloody nose. He had an unobstructed view straight into the kitchen, the pots and pans lined up on the counter like shipwrecks on a worn linoleum sea.

“I can explain,” Portia said hurriedly, stumbling over to the table and dropping the pan of chicken down.

“Don’t bother. Save your explanations for zoning court.”

Thirty-three

ARIEL SAT ON the edge of her bed, shoes hooked over the side bedrail, her feet jiggling as she tried her hardest to calm down. After the disaster downstairs, she had flown to her room to get away. She hadn’t left since.

Things were getting worse. Anthony and Dad fighting. Some inspector guy showing up. Portia getting in trouble.

But the worst was seeing the look on Portia’s face when she learned that she didn’t own her apartment. Talk about surprise. Ariel had been as surprised as Portia. How come none of them had known? And why hadn’t her dad said something sooner?

Just then there was a strange noise outside her bedroom door. Miranda giggled, tiptoeing down the hallway toward her own bedroom, even though she was supposed to be spending the night with a friend. Ariel started to confront her, but then she heard someone else laugh, the sound deeper, and she knew it was a boy.

“Shhh!” Miranda whispered, with another giggle.

“I’m being quiet. You’re the one making all the noise.”

Dustin. Ariel realized that Miranda was giving in to the guy. She was going to have sex, right there in their house, their dad somewhere downstairs, probably in his study.

Her legs started jiggling again as she heard Miranda’s door click shut, then louder, muffled giggling. She fell back on the mattress and planted the pillow over her head.

Minutes ticked by. A muffled quiet. Slowly, Ariel started to breathe again and she pulled the pillow away. She hated to think what the silence meant.

But then something worse happened.

“Miranda?”

Ariel gasped, and leaped off the bed and raced to her door, flinging it open. But it was too late.

Her dad stood in front of her sister’s closed door. “Miranda, open this door right now.”

“Go away!”

Dad grabbed the door handle, but it was locked. He pounded on the hard wood. “Open this door,” he demanded, banging on the door.

“No! I hate you! You ruin everything!”

Dad didn’t wait another second. He was a big guy, strong. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when he rammed his shoulder into the door and it crashed open.

It looked like the movies, the sound awful, like a huge, splintering crack that went straight to Ariel’s gut. She could hardly believe what she was watching. What had happened to her normal family?

“What in the hell is going on here?”

“Whoa, dude!”

“Don’t you fucking ‘dude’ me, you degenerate. Get the hell away from my daughter.”

“Dad! This is my room! You can’t just barge in here!”

“I am your father. You will do what I say!”

Ariel figured her dad must be looking way scary, because the next thing she knew, Dustin was dashing down the hall, pulling on his shirt, his belt unbuckled. She felt even sicker now.

“I hate you!” Miranda shouted the words so loud that Ariel could practically hear her spit.

“So you said!” Dad bellowed back.

Then he pulled a deep breath. “Damn it, Miranda. What do you think you’re doing? You’re barely sixteen years old.”

“Dustin loves me! And I love him!”

“Dustin is a hormonal asshole who just wants to get laid!”

Ariel squeezed her eyes shut. Who was the man shouting like that? How could that guy be her dad?

“Oh, really?” Miranda spat. “You know that from experience?”

“I am trying,” their father stated, his voice cold and angry. “I have put up with your antics. I have put up with your sarcasm. I have put up with you talking back. But I’ve had it.”

“Have you?” Miranda sneered. “Well, guess what? I’ve had it, too! If Mom were here, she’d want me to have a boyfriend.”

“Your mother isn’t here! And you sneaking a boy into this house to … to … do—”

“Do what, Dad?” Miranda scoffed. “Fuck? Like you and Portia?”

Silence. A great big painful silence.

Dad and Portia? Ariel felt light-headed. She remembered what Uncle Anthony had said. She didn’t know why, but she thought she was going to throw up.

“Like I didn’t know,” Miranda spat.

It seemed like forever before her dad said, “You are grounded.”

“Great, there’s an original response, Dad. But I’d think you’d have a bigger bag of tricks than that. You think grounding me will keep me away from Dustin? I love him! You wouldn’t understand love. I know more than you think about you and love!”

Ariel jumped back as their dad slammed out of the room, then hammered his way downstairs.

The only thing left in the hall was part of the door panel and the shiny brass doorknob that had rolled out of Miranda’s room like Humpty Dumpty after the fall.

Thirty-four

PORTIA WAS VAGUELY AWARE that morning had finally come. She had spent the whole night cleaning up the disarray of pots and pans. The city inspector was long gone. But he’d left her with a general citation. Plus, he reeled off the list of things he could and would cite her for if she didn’t cease and desist immediately—everything from improper sanitation to a ten-thousand-dollar fine for illegal posting of a sign. After her head stopped reeling, with tears streaming down her face, she had ripped The Glass Kitchen sign out of the window.

No matter how she looked at it, the testing version of The Glass Kitchen was over.

Portia dropped into one of the ancient living room chairs and thought of the last meal she had made for her grandmother, a meal for just one person. When Gram had seen it, she’d been shocked. But after long minutes she had pulled a deep breath.

“It’s your time now, Portia,” Gram had said. “It’s your legacy.”

“Gram, I just cook! You’re the one people come to see. You give them advice. You tell them the kinds of food that will restore them. You are The Glass Kitchen.”

Gram had looked at her for an eternity, seeming to consider. Then finally: “My sweet Portia. I lost the knowing years ago. I woke up one morning and it was gone. I didn’t want to believe it, and I kept cooking, trying to pretend it wasn’t true. But the Kitchen began to fail. Nothing I cooked was right. When I still had the knowing, no one gave a thought as to why they were drawn here, because they always left sated, with answers, with calm.

“Even after the food started to fail, they continued to come since by then I was famous. But once they started leaving unsatisfied, they had to find a way to explain why they were drawn to me, to my food, in the first place. Suddenly answers mattered. As people do, they found excuses. That’s when people started calling me crazy.

“Ever since the day your knowing found Olivia, the day your mother brought you to me, I told myself I needed to teach you the ways. But,” she hesitated, “I couldn’t do it. I told myself that it was because I wanted you to have a normal life. Truth to tell, I didn’t want to share the spotlight. That’s why I didn’t help you develop the knowing. Only when I realized that I had lost mine did I accept that I needed you to save The Glass Kitchen. To save me. If you knew what to cook and bake, I’d know what the people needed to be told to find their calm. So I brought you into the kitchen in earnest then, but to cook, only to cook. Still not teaching you. But you developed the knowing anyway, more powerfully even than me.

“But none of that matters now. It’s your time to do it all, Portia. I know you’re tired of not being set free to explore. And you’ve shown me by making this meal. Making it for one.”

“Gram, I don’t want to do this without you! That’s not why I made the meal for one.”

Then why had she made the meal for one? Why had she known what to prepare, how to set the table? Deep down, she had wanted to fly.

“Hush, child,” Gram had said.

Then she had walked out into that Texas storm, shocking Portia.

She had married Robert and suppressed the knowing, as if that could keep her guilt at bay.

But marriage to Robert had failed. If she was truthful, deep down she had wanted more. She had wanted a Glass Kitchen. She had wanted passion. She had wanted to fly, just as Gram had said.

Portia’s head fell back, and a word escaped her mouth that was, frankly, blasphemous. After her failed marriage, she had thought she had found passion and a Glass Kitchen in New York. But that had all been a lie as well.

She went to the closet and pulled out the two suitcases she had put away, throwing the few things she had brought with her from Texas back inside. This wasn’t her home. She should have understood that the moment Gabriel Kane had first seen her in the apartment and demanded to know why she was there.

But the most humiliating thing of all? He must not have told her because he had wanted her. She had seen the way he looked at her from the very first time. The heat. The desire. And he was nothing if not a man who got what he wanted.

She had slept her way into free rent.

She bit her lip savagely for a moment before she had the tears under control. She refused, absolutely refused, to cry. If she started, she might never stop—not with the gut-wrenching pain of Robert’s betrayal mixed together with that of Gabriel, whom she had thought was different.

Her cell phone rang, and Cordelia’s number popped up. Portia had to figure out what to do next, but she couldn’t do that at either sister’s apartment.

Thoughts of chocolate drifted through her head. She tasted it, smelled it. She pressed ignore on the phone as it occurred to her where she might go.

Twenty-four hours later, her cell phone was still ringing every time she turned around. Cordelia, Olivia. Gabriel. Everyone wanted to know where she had gone.

This time, it was Cordelia, her fifth call in an hour. Portia turned back to the TV.

“How can you watch that garbage?”

She ignored the question, though she shot her hosts a half smile. “You know,” she said, “Texas hair gets a bad rap for being big. But it has nothing on New Jersey hair.” Portia took a particularly unladylike bite of a Little Debbie cake, her words muffled by the premade pastry. “Not a thing.”

“I guess they didn’t teach you manners in Texas when they were teaching you how to do hair?”

Portia swallowed and glanced over. “Seriously, Stan, have you tasted these things? They’re amazing.”

Stanley rolled his eyes, shuffled over, and sat in the chair next to her. “How long do you plan on staying here?”

“You said I could stay as long as I liked.”

“No, Marcus said you could stay as long as you like. The only reason I didn’t slam the door in your face when you showed up like a half-drowned cat in a storm was because I felt indebted after those chocolate nuts you gave me.” He sniffed. “Lucky for you, you showed up when I was experiencing a moment of weakness.”

Portia shot him a dark grin. “You better work on your gruff thing. A person only has to know you for more than a minute to realize you’re a softie.”

Marcus strode into the room. “He’s a mean old man, don’t let him fool you.” But he leaned down and kissed Stanley on the top of his head.

A twist of yearning hit Portia’s gut at the sight of two people committed to each other for so many years. That was what she had wanted out of life: a partner who knew all her traits, good and bad, and loved her anyway.

She unwrapped another cake in a crackle of clear plastic, then took a giant bite.

Stanley scoffed. “Where’s the woman who made all those chocolate nuts and figs? The one who cooked and baked, the one who went on and on with all her talk about the joy to be found in food.”

Portia raised the half-eaten prefabricated cake in the air. “Don’t know her, never met her. But if I did, I’d tell her to stuff a Little Debbie cake in her obnoxiously cheerful face. And, really, you can’t be tired of me yet.”

“I’m hiding the Hostess Sno Balls,” Stanley grumbled.

Marcus laughed.

After Stanley and Marcus went back to the kitchen, Portia slouched lower in her seat. Stanley was right. She had hardly moved from her spot in front of the television. For all her pull-herself-up-by-the-bootstraps pep talk about fixing her life, she didn’t have the first clue how to do it. So she hadn’t. For the first time ever, Portia was just sitting around and feeling sorry for herself.

Even in Texas, when everything had gone to hell in a handbasket, she had been proactive. Sure, she had fled. But she had actively fled.

Right now, all she wanted to do was flip through cable stations until she found yet another show filled with people who probably couldn’t spell kitchen much less know what to do in one.

And she refused to feel one bit guilty about it.

Thirty-five

PORTIA WAS GONE. Vanished.

For three whole days, Ariel listened and watched as her dad tramped up and down the stairs to Portia’s apartment. Every time he returned back upstairs he still didn’t have any idea where she was. For all three of those days, Ariel tucked in her shirt, folded her ankle socks neatly around her ankles, brushed her hair, and even wore a headband she thought her dad would like. Like that would help.

He only looked at her oddly, and didn’t say a word. He also didn’t say a word about their missing neighbor.

She even tried to get him to talk about it, doing her best Shrink Speak, but finally he snapped, “That’s enough, Ariel. She’s gone.”

Anyone who didn’t know him would have sworn he couldn’t have cared less. But Ariel knew better. She knew he was hurting. Her dad dealt with stuff just like she did, swallowing it back, not letting on. It was one of the ways that she and her dad were exactly alike.

Plus, every night he went down the fire escape like a lovesick burglar. Of course he didn’t stay down there long, because really, what was there to find?

The problem was that unless her dad went out and found her, Portia wasn’t coming back. And there was no sign that he was planning to do that.

It was getting her worried. What if he didn’t get the Portia Problem fixed? She’d have to do it for him.

But she had promised to be a good daughter and let him fix things. So she continued to tuck in her shirt and worked hard to smile and be polite. Being a perfect daughter was proving even more difficult than her genealogy report.

But on the fourth day, she’d had it. She woke up knowing that her dad wasn’t going to get the job done. Here she was being, like, so perfect, and what good was that doing?

She started thinking, taking notes in her journal, figured things out. With a start she realized that she was doing perfect wrong! She needed to do the kind of perfect Mother Teresa did, and based on every photo she had seen, Mother Teresa didn’t worry about tucking in her blouse. She was out there doing, helping, mucking around doing the dirty work. If it had been up to Mother Teresa, she would be out helping Dad right along with the lepers! She wouldn’t sit on the sidelines!

As quietly she could, Ariel sneaked downstairs to Portia’s apartment, using the key Portia kept hidden under the mat, regardless of the fact that Dad always did the whole growling thing whenever something came up about it. Once inside, she walked from room to room, looking for a clue.

“Where are you, Portia?” she said aloud, feeling like an idiot, especially since the walls didn’t talk back. “Where did you go?”

Finally she ended up in the kitchen. She was about to leave when she saw a slip of paper on the floor. She read it a couple of times before dashing upstairs, bursting into her dad’s study, and handing over the sheet of paper.

He gave it a quick look, then eyed her. “What’s this?”

“A recipe!”

“I know that, Ariel. But why are you showing me?”

“Dad,” she said as nicely as she could, since she was still sort of trying to be the perfect daughter, even if it was the Mother Teresa version, “it’s a recipe. For chocolate-covered peanuts and figs.”

Her dad sat back in the leather chair and stared at the piece of paper. Ariel saw the resistance on his face. But she wasn’t completely sure what he was resisting.

“Dad,” Ariel repeated. “Like Portia always said, some things are true whether we believe them or not.”

She watched as he looked back at her, his eyes narrowing.

“She left us, Ariel. Even if I were inclined to look for her, I don’t know where to find her, and a fig recipe isn’t going to tell me.”

Ariel’s mouth gaped. Finally, she gave in and rolled her eyes. “Seriously? You can’t figure it out based on the chocolate chili recipe? The one Portia made. The one she told you about because all the extra bags disappeared.”

The chocolates that had drawn her in like a pathetic puppy to her sister’s soiree. Not that her dad knew that part of it.

“You can’t figure it out based on that?” She enunciated each syllable, unable to hold back the sarcasm any longer.

Her dad’s eyes narrowed even more, but then he drew a breath and his face kind of softened. “I’m glad to see my old Ariel is back.”

She peered at him across the massive desk. “What do you mean, the ‘old Ariel’?”

“The one who doesn’t measure her words.” Then he stood. “What you’re telling me is that Portia’s been right next door all this time.”

“There’s hope for you yet,” she cheered, racing around the desk and throwing her arms around him.

Thirty-six

PORTIA JERKED IN SURPRISE when she heard Stanley and Marcus’s buzzer.

“Well, well, well,” Stanley said, glimpsing out the window. “Look who’s here?”

“Who?”

“Our neighbor.”

“Ariel? Miranda?”

“Nope. Their father.”

“I’m not here!”

Marcus tsked. “You’re here. You’re sitting right there.”

“No way! He lied to me! He … he…” She cut herself off. There was nothing to explain. “I am not here.”

Finally, Marcus conceded, and told Gabriel she wasn’t available.

“That’s not the same as I’m not here!”

“True, but it also isn’t a lie.”

He had her there.

Portia stayed in front of the TV. In fact, she sat there for the whole next day, too. A Top Model marathon kept her glued to the screen. Stanley threw up his hands and grumbled. Marcus tsked, but was utterly kind. Finally, after a total of five days, Marcus said, “Portia, sweetie, don’t you want to go outside? Get some fresh air?”

Portia sat in front of the television, wearing a pair of old Adidas sweat pants Marcus had donated to the cause, and a misshapen Chorus Line T-shirt he had given her outright when she had run through the few clothes she had of her own. But she couldn’t leave. She couldn’t talk to Gabriel. What would she say? How could you not have told me that you owned the apartment? How did you make love to me over and over again, all the while you knew that you owned the only thing I thought I could call my own? How could she ever trust him?

Or even, to herself: What in the world am I going to do with my life?

“How about we take a walk in the park?” Marcus suggested. “Or, say, you change up your clothes?”

“I changed. I wore a Cats T-shirt yesterday. And before that, I wore the one I found in the bag headed for the thrift store: Ain’t Misbehavin’.”

“Of course. How could I forget the black Magic Marker you used to cross out Ain’t?”

She glanced over, eyeballing him to see if sweet Marcus was being sarcastic. “You’re sounding an awful lot like Ariel.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Portia felt even worse. She missed Gabriel more than she knew how to say. But she also missed Ariel. Even Miranda, a bit. Still, she couldn’t bear thinking about Gabriel making love to her while knowing he owned her apartment and not telling her.

She groaned, then slid down even farther front of the TV. Obviously, she should feel guilty about camping out on Marcus and Stanley’s overstuffed chair, not facing her problems head-on—especially after that whole don’t be a chicken speech she had given Cordelia. She was starting to feel guilty. But just a little.

“I’m fine,” she said.

She heard Stanley shuffle in; the two men whispered for several moments. Portia heard phrases like: Not natural for a woman to let herself go, Too much TV isn’t good for her psyche, and, Ain’t Misbehavin, really was one of the most overrated musicals of the 70s.

“I can hear you two.”

“We just think you’re a bit, well, discombobulated.” This from Marcus.

“Pshaw. She’s a wreck. And she looks like one, too.” Stanley.

Portia jerked up. “Fine. I’ll go take a bath, wash my hair.”

“Sweetie,” Marcus said, his grimace apologetic. “We weren’t talking about your hair, which, by the bye, is hideous. But we aren’t ones to judge.”

Portia scowled.

“We’re referring to your mental state. You are a wreck. We discussed it after breakfast and decided we had no choice but to take matters into our own hands.”

Portia narrowed her eyes. “What did you do?”

The door buzzer sounded.

“Seriously, what have you done?”

“It’s for your own good,” Marcus said.

Stanley scoffed as he shuffled to the door. Next thing she knew, they had guests.

Portia jumped to her feet. “Traitor!” Portia glared at Marcus and Stanley. “You know I’m not in the mood for family!”

Marcus grimaced. Stanley shuffled back to his seat by the window, not one bit apologetic.

“You are the traitor!” Cordelia shouted. “Not taking our calls. Going MIA without a single word to let us know you were okay and not dead in a ditch.”

“I don’t do worry!” Olivia stated.

“Good God, look at you,” Cordelia went on. “You do look like you’ve been in a ditch.”

Stanley snorted in agreement.

“You need to stop with this nonsense.” Cordelia walked over to Portia, took her hand, and pulled her toward the staircase. “It’s time you rejoin the living.” She glanced over at Marcus. “I take it there’s a bathroom upstairs with a sink, running water?”

“Up the stairs, second door on the right,” Marcus supplied. “Her meager stash of belongings is in the bedroom one door beyond that.”

Portia didn’t know if she wanted to scream or cry as Cordelia and Olivia herded her up the stairs.

“I don’t need the two of you marching in here thinking you can boss me around!”

“We aren’t bossing you around,” Olivia said. “We’re taking charge while you’re mentally incapacitated.”

“I’m tired of this!” Portia snapped. “I’m tired of both of you always in my business. I’m tired of trying to live the kind of life I want, only to get upended every time I turn around!” Lord, it felt good to let it out. “And I’m tried of always having to save—”

She cut herself off. It only felt good for so long. She was angry at her sisters. But, really, she knew she was angry at the world. She had never been one to intentionally hurt anyone.

“Tired of having to save us,” Cordelia supplied for her.

“Of course that’s what she thinks,” Olivia said to Cordelia. “Poor little Portia is sure she wouldn’t be in this mess if the two of us hadn’t browbeaten her into this whole Glass Kitchen fiasco. And if she hadn’t been busy trying to get the café started, then she would’ve been able to find a real job and not have to take one cooking for Gabriel, which is the only reason she got involved with him and HAD SEX!”

“Olivia!” Portia snapped.

“Of course she knew,” Cordelia said. “She’s Olivia. And of course she told me.”

“It sucks being you,” Olivia added with more than a little sarcasm.

Portia ground her teeth as her sisters pushed and prodded her down the hallway of Stanley and Marcus’s old town house. “You don’t know the first thing about what it’s like to be me.”

Olivia held up her hand, seesawing her thumb and forefinger, much as she used to do when they were children. “The world’s smallest violin is playing for you, baby sister.”

Cordelia rolled her eyes. “The fact is, Portia Desdemona, you have a gift or talent or maybe even a curse, which is really nothing more than a wildly in-tune intuition that freaks you out. For that matter, it freaks me out. But so what?”

Olivia nodded like a member of the choir. “So what!” she echoed.

Portia’s frustration bubbled up. “You don’t understand!”

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself!” Cordelia barked. “Did it ever occur to you that I would love to have a gift? Any gift? That I’d give my eyeteeth to feel special, to feel like I’m someone other than a woman who just tries to get by in a regular life in a regular world that falls apart for no good reason?”

Olivia and Portia stopped and gaped at Cordelia.

“Who knew?” Olivia said. “At least about feeling regular. How come you forgot to act regular, if you’re feeling that way?”

Tears suddenly welled up in Cordelia’s eyes.

“Olivia!” Portia snapped, and turned to her older sister. “Cordelia, honey, your world isn’t falling apart. James is going to be fine. You all are going to be fine.”

Yet again, it was always this way with them. Sniping, fighting, arguing, taking sides as alliances ebbed and flowed through each encounter. Now the sisters stopped and stared at one another, then did what they always did best: They sighed—half a laugh, half resignation—then hugged.

“We don’t care what you do, Portia,” Cordelia said, choked up. “Just do something. Stop hiding. You can’t keep living a half life, not embracing the knowing, but not embracing anything else, either. You’ve got to find a way to live your life, sweetie. Not Gram’s, not Robert’s, not ours. Yours. And that takes being strong enough to stand up to whoever is trying to sway you. Even if it’s us.” Cordelia gave Portia a little shake. “Now, clean up. Olivia and I are here to help. But you have to let us know what you want help with.”

The sisters left Portia standing in the bathroom. She looked in the mirror, giving herself a hard glare. “You are not this person,” she said to her reflection.

Thirty minutes later, Portia was bathed, dressed, and sitting cross-legged on the floor in her borrowed bedroom. Cordelia and Olivia had left, but not before she promised to call them tomorrow with a plan.

Portia took a deep breath, unzipped her suitcase. She sat there for long minutes more, then nodded her head and pulled out all three Glass Kitchen cookbooks. Whether she liked it or not, the knowing was her legacy. It had led her in so many ways, giving her answers, even if she didn’t like the answers it had given. But she couldn’t deny that the answers were true.

She didn’t bother with the first two books. She went straight to the third volume. The one Gram had always said wasn’t for novices. The one she hadn’t read until now.

She cracked the old spine and found spidery handwriting on the first page.

Every kitchen should be filled with glass—to drink from, to see through, to reflect the light of a wonderful meal prepared with love. To ensure that the light is not lost, I have filled these pages with everything that has been passed down to me from earlier generations of Cuthcart women. I hope each generation to come will do the same.

Imogen Cuthcart

The Republic of Texas, 1839

Portia started to read the fragile pages, first tentatively, then greedily. Images swirled as she read. Stews and roasts, herbs and spices, broth and gravy, cookies and pies. Sweet and sour. Joy and laughter, pain and sorrow. No life could be without these.

The language was stilted, the meals old-fashioned, but the advice was progressive, considering how old the book must have been. Each time Portia came to a notation, she recognized the ones that her grandmother had made, modern takes on antiquated forms of cooking, be it the update of a gas oven from coal-stoked, or a mixer to replace beating a cake by hand.

There were as many recipes for folk medicine as for meals. Obviously food had been the main source of healing for her forebearers. Gram had traded in her own version of food as a great healer, both physically and mentally. What surprised Portia was how each of these older, more complicated entries made so much sense to her, as if she already knew the wisdom she found copied down so carefully over the years, as if she had been born with a knowing that was far deeper than her ancestors’, truly deeper than her grandmother’s, as Gram had said.

Portia turned the last page and the breath rushed out of her. Gram had written this page herself, years after the book was originally compiled.

I dreamed a meal. A big meal. A final meal. I keep telling myself that it’s impossible to know for sure. My knowing is coming in fits and starts these days. But the images of food in this meal are strong, and I’ve been at this long enough to know, to feel certain, that when I see this meal, it will be time for me to stop. What I don’t know is what I will do when my turn is over, when it is time for me to pass the baton. How will I be able to bear it when my whole life has been the knowing?

Though that shouldn’t be my worry. I should worry that I haven’t taught Portia what she needs to know. Why is it so hard for me to let go? Why is it so hard for me to teach her? Why won’t I let her read any of these books, and most especially this one?

Because I’m jealous that she has always had more power than me, and if she reads it, she’ll realize that she doesn’t need me at all.

The Meal

Chile cheese and bacon-

stuffed cherry tomatoes

Pulled pork

Endive slaw

Potato pancakes

Homemade catsup

Portia stared at the entry. Her chest constricted.

It wasn’t her selfishness coming to fruition through the food and the single place setting that had pushed Gram into the lightning. It had been Gram’s meal, Gram’s knowing, that had been realized in Portia’s cooking.

She felt weak with relief, freed—a feeling followed quickly by a burst of frustrated anger.

“It didn’t have to be that way, Gram,” she whispered to the empty room.

If Portia had known her grandmother had lost the knowing, she would have worked with her to find a way forward for both of them. If she had known, she wouldn’t have fallen into the trap of living a half life with Robert. Trapped in a half life of guilt thinking she had made a meal that had killed her grandmother.

But it also meant that now she finally knew how to move forward.

Thirty-seven

ARIEL CRAWLED OUT her window to the fire escape. She still hated the fire escape, but crawling out onto the thin metal stairs moved all her worry away from her disintegrating family and onto the fact that at any second, she could plunge to her death. Okay, so maybe that was an exaggeration, but try telling that to her brain. Three stories above ground seemed really high when she was standing on two-foot-wide thin slates of metal.

But tonight even the precariousness of her perch on the fire escape wasn’t helping. It had been a week since Portia had left them, and she needed someone to talk to. Not the Shrink. Not her dad. And definitely not Miranda, since Miranda was the person she needed to talk about. Which left Portia, and Portia was gone.

Not that her dad was doing anything about it. Hello! He should have been dragging Portia back where she belonged—downstairs in the garden apartment that should have been hers.

The thought of that made her smile, since Ariel had spent the whole first few weeks Portia had lived there calling it a basement. But just like Portia, Ariel had fallen in love with the old place.

With her legs dangling off the sides, she rested her forearms and chin on the metal side slat and looked out at the big buildings all around her. It was so different here in New York from their house in New Jersey. There, the house nestled into the cliff, gardens built up the back side, with stone steps taking you higher and higher. Her mom had loved those gardens. It felt weird to think that if Portia ever saw them, she’d love them, too.

Would Portia ever see their house? Maybe they would move back now that things were getting so awful with Miranda.

The sound of the door opening to the garden broke the quiet.

“Yep, I could easily live here.”

Ariel scooted back against the wall. Peering through the floor slats, she watched as her uncle walked out into the garden. She couldn’t in a million years imagine her dad buying the place for Anthony to live in. The two guys practically hated each other. So it didn’t make sense.

“Anthony, you don’t want to live here any more than Gabriel wants you here.”

Her grandmother.

Anthony laughed, a sound that didn’t seem very happy. “No, he doesn’t, does he? I can’t think of a better reason to move in. That should up the ante for what he’s willing to pay me. Or if he gives it to me, like he promised, I’ll sell the damn thing, take the money and run.”

Her grandmother made a disgruntled noise, then walked back inside.

This whole thing was about money. Ariel took a deep breath. If she could figure out a way to convince her dad to give his brother what he wanted, then Anthony would be gone. It made so much sense. It was perfect. It would make everyone happy. Well, not Miranda, but she couldn’t solve everything. But wasn’t she good at talking to her dad, getting him to see her point of view?

Leaping up, she staggered, then grabbed the railing as she hurried as fast as she could down the zigzag of fire escape steps.

Her uncle looked up. “Ariel, what the f—”

She made it to the ground, safe, almost breathless, and gasped, “I’ll get you the money, Uncle Anthony!”

“What?”

“I can tell you don’t really want to live here! And Dad would hate it.”

At the mention of his brother, Anthony’s face creased hard.

“Don’t you see, it’s the perfect solution? I can make Dad see it. How much money do you want?”

As the words hurtled out of her mouth, she felt all the pieces of her world finally coming together.

“Why?” he said carefully. “Why would you do that?”

“Because!” she blurted out, “I know you’re Miranda’s dad!”

The words tumbled out before she could think them through, as if they had been dammed up and finally broken free. “I know you’re her real dad. And I think she knows it, too, which is why she’s acting worse and worse and getting in more and more trouble. It’s because you’re here and not being her dad, don’t you see? But you don’t want to be her dad, and if you stay, you make my dad mad. If you do stay, eventually something is going to explode and everything will come out, then everyone will know your secret, including my dad. Then what’re you going to do?”

“Miranda’s dad?” Uncle Anthony said. “What are you talking about? Jesus, I’m not Miranda’s dad. Have you lost your mind?”

Ariel didn’t believe him for a second. “Just tell me, Uncle Anthony. Tell me how much it will take to make you go away?”

His expression hardened, anger filling his eyes.

She drew a sharp breath. “Sorry! That came out wrong, I swear. It’s just that we both know you’d be way happier not hanging out in New York. You love all that great mountain-climbing stuff, and wrestling with lions, or whatever it is you do.”

“I do not wrestle lions.”

He spaced the words in a really furious way. In fact, she’d never seen him so angry. “Sorry!” she repeated, thinking fast. “I swear, cross my heart, I won’t tell a soul about you being Miranda’s dad.”

“I am not Miranda’s father.”

“Okay, seriously. You’re forgetting who you’re talking to. Me. The smart one. Of course you are. I saw when my mom and dad got married. I know Miranda’s birthday. And your mom said you and my mom were in love before you left for Africa.” She was on a roll, every last bit of what she’d learned spilling out. “Don’t you see? If you stay, all you’ll do is make things worse. For yourself!” she added quickly. “I swear, I can find a way to convince him to give you more money.”

“Ariel—”

She had no idea she was crying until she felt the tears streaming down her face. “You have to go, Uncle Anthony. You can’t let anyone know you’re Miranda’s dad!”

“Damn it, Ariel. I am not Miranda’s dad! I’m yours!”

Thirty-eight

A SOUND LIKE ocean waves rushed in Ariel’s ears and the world jerked.

“What? No,” she breathed. “No, no, no.”

Her head spun, images of her mother dancing through her mind, like the home movies running in slow motion. Mom laughing. Mom dancing. Mom and Anthony. Always Anthony coming back into their lives.

Her mom had loved Anthony Kane, not his brother, Gabriel.

And, worst of all, awful Uncle Anthony was … was her father.

Ariel dashed back up the fire escape, Anthony muttering and cursing just behind her. But she didn’t stop, didn’t look back. She bolted up to Miranda’s window instead of hers before Anthony could get her, and banged.

“What are you doing?” her sister demanded when she opened her window, Anthony flattened back into the shadows.

Coward.

The word rippled through her. The man who said he was her father was a coward. The one who was strong and great wasn’t her real dad. How could that be true?

Ariel threw herself inside Miranda’s room. She wanted her to do something, make the awful words go away. She wanted her sister to look at her like she loved her, like she cared. She wanted someone in this wacky world to see her, not let her disappear any more.

“Seriously, Ariel, what is your problem? You’re not allowed out there.”

“Uncle Anthony says he’s my dad,” she whispered, realizing that her hands shook. “You don’t think it’s true, do you?”

For half a second, Miranda’s eyes widened. Then her cell phone rang. “Look, if it’s true, it totally sucks. But I don’t believe it. As much as I like him, we both know he’d do just about anything to get up in Dad’s face.” Her phone rang again. “Seriously, forget him.” She flipped open her phone. “Hey, Dustin.”

Her tone changed completely, her whole body going soft as she listened to whatever the Creep was saying.

“I’m totally ready,” she said. “I’ll meet you at Port Authority. The DeCamp bus to New Jersey.”

Ariel gaped. “You’re going to New Jersey?”

“Shit, I’ve gotta go. I’ll meet you there.” She glared at Ariel. “Don’t you dare say a word. I’m already totally late. I’m going to the old house.”

“What? Why?” Ariel gasped.

“We’re going to … hang out.”

“You’re going out there to have sex with him!”

“What if I am? Are you going to be a total baby and tell Dad?”

At the mention of their dad, Ariel felt her lip tremble.

Miranda sighed, impatient. “Listen. We’ll deal with the whole dad thing tomorrow. I mean seriously, what are the chances that it’s true? Uncle Anthony can be so lame, and everyone knows he hates Dad. He probably said it just to be mean.”

Ariel felt a sickening mix of gratitude that her sister said something nice and a sizzling worry about what Miranda was getting ready to do.

“Why do you have to go all the way out there to … do it?”

“Dustin thinks it will be fun. I shouldn’t even tell you this, but the first time is supposed to be special. He has a surprise for me.”

“But he broke up with you! Now he’s saying you’ve got to go out to New Jersey to have special sex with him? That just seems weird.”

“It is not weird! Kids go out to New Jersey all the time.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. We’re taking the bus. Totally easy.”

“But what will Dad say when he finds out?”

“He won’t find out. He thinks I’m spending the night with Becky.”

“This is a really bad idea, Mir.”

“Tell Dad, and you’re not my sister anymore.” Miranda said it flat and mean; then she grabbed her bag and slammed the door on the way out.

Ariel paced her bedroom. She felt sick and weird and terrified at the possibility that her dad wasn’t her dad. Panic stuck in her throat, making it hard to breathe.

A lump swelled in her throat. What would she do if was true? What if Anthony took her away? What would she do if she had to go live with him? She couldn’t imagine her dad not being her dad. She couldn’t imagine him not coming in and checking on her in the middle of the night. After a whole life of him being Mr. Busy Working Guy, it seemed unfair that he’d get taken away now, when he was staying at home so much of the time.

Her uncle had to be lying. Just like Miranda had said.

The thoughts went round and round in her head until she felt as if she was going to throw up. But there was something else. Miranda had gone to New Jersey. To their old house.

Ariel buckled over, clutching her stomach, other memories pressing in on her. The fact was, their old house held something she hadn’t wanted to face.

“Do you remember my memory chest, Ariel?”

The words hit Ariel hard, words she had refused to think about. They were her mother’s words as she lay trapped in the car, blood streaking down her face.

“Mom,” Ariel had cried. She hadn’t cared about any chest. “You have to be okay!”

Ariel had watched, terrified, as a tear rolled down her mom’s temple, into her hair. “You’re a big girl now, A.”

“I’m only eleven!”

“Nearly twelve,” her mother breathed.

Ariel still hadn’t understood how she could be unhurt while her mom was such a broken mess. Plus, it was Ariel who had made her mom so angry that she had driven fast, too fast.

“Ariel, pay attention.” Her mother had struggled to speak. Ariel had experienced the awful feeling that she was watching her mother disappear.

“Listen to me, Ariel. I was an idiot. I didn’t think. But now you’ve got to find the box. It’s in my study. Upstairs. In a little cabinet behind my memory chest. You have to get the box.” She had tried to move and moaned. “Find it. Make sure you give it to Gabriel.”

Ariel was crying by then, hard and loud. “What do you mean?”

But her mom hadn’t answered, her eyes fluttering closed, and Ariel watched her mother disappear.

“Mom! Mommy!”

Police and firefighters had arrived on the scene, pulling Ariel out of the car. But they hadn’t been able to free her mom.

Over a year had passed since then, and Ariel hadn’t done what her mom had asked. She hadn’t wanted anything to do with the chest, or the box her mother must have hidden behind the chest. She had tried to pretend that her mother hadn’t even said the words. She had resented the Shrink for wanting her to remember. But Portia had said that sometimes you had to dig deep to find answers. Ariel had hated when Portia said that. But now she knew she had to do it.

She flew to her stash of money, hoping she could catch up to Miranda. She’d have to sneak out of the house. So she wouldn’t run into her dad. Or non-dad.

She swallowed back tears, shoved the money into her backpack, and made it out the front door without being caught.

It wasn’t nearly as hard to get out of Manhattan as Ariel had thought it would be. She’d been saving money since the whole city clerk-cab fiasco. Every chance she got she asked her dad for money for this and that. Her dad never asked to see the birthday presents she supposedly bought for her nonexistent friends. She wasn’t ever going to get caught in some random place again without enough money to get home.

Who knew that the next “home” she would need to get back to would be her old one in New Jersey? That was weird.

Of course she had always known that she’d have to go back someday.

She took a taxi to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and made it on to a DeCamp bus without anyone questioning her. By then, she’d missed Miranda, probably by a couple of buses, but she managed it herself. Pretty soon she was looking out the window of the bus as it hurtled through the Lincoln Tunnel, focusing on the way her ears popped as they drove deeper under the Hudson River. Better than focusing on what she’d find when she got to Montclair.

What would she do if she walked in on Miranda in bed with Dustin?

A few tears escaped, but she used her sleeve to swipe them away and kept staring out the window so no one could see.

When they came out of the tunnel, she saw the giant buildings of Manhattan standing like a wall of cement and glass just across the Hudson River. Twenty minutes later, the bus pulled into the parking lot by the Upper Montclair train stop. Everything looked the same as when they’d lived there before the accident. But of course it wasn’t. It felt like some weird awful song.

She hitched the backpack over her shoulders and got off the bus. She went to the line of cabs, then asked the front driver to take her to the house.

He looked at her in the rearview mirror, then shrugged. “Sure.”

They turned right out of the parking lot, drove over the railroad tracks, followed by another right, a left, then one more right on to a road tucked into a hill, exactly as she and her mom had done a hundred times, even down to Ariel sitting in the backseat.

The house stood on the left, giant with the long green lawn—all lit up like a Christmas tree, teenage kids going in and out of the front door.

Ariel pressed back against the seat.

Miranda wasn’t out here having sex.

She was having a massive party.

Thirty-nine

PORTIA SAT DOWN in Stanley and Marcus’s living room, ready to get on with her life. Finally. She hadn’t so much as turned on the TV since her sisters left. She had made a list. A bunch of lists, actually.

She had cleaned up, put away the last of the prepackaged food, cooked Stanley and Marcus a big, early dinner before her hosts took off for Lincoln Center and the opera, leaving her alone. But the moment she turned to the first of her lists, the doorbell rang, surprising her.

Portia peeked out the window. Gabriel stood on the steps, looking out at the street rather than at the door. He looked typically Gabriel—tall, fit, ruggedly beautiful in his own beastly way. The very sight of him sent a stab of ridiculous lust through her, followed by a wave of panic.

Like a criminal, she dropped to the floor, not wanting him to see her. He had proven to be an addiction, and there was no better way to cure the need than going cold turkey.

Not that he was making it easy. He called her cell phone practically every hour. The messages had started simple. “Portia, we need to talk.” Gruff, impersonal, so very like Gabriel. From there, they had escalated. “Portia, call me. We need to talk about the apartment.” Before he moved on to a tightly controlled anger. “Damn it, Portia. Let’s deal with this like adults.” Then a sigh, as if giving in. “Please.”

Which only pissed her off more.

After a few minutes, she heard Gabriel going back down the front steps. She rolled to the side, sitting up on the floor with her back against the wall. And thought about violets. Watermelon.

The images surged in her head. She could taste the sweet juicy meat of watermelon crunching in her teeth. She smelled the gentle scent of violets. And something else, sharp and pungent. Burning. Like fire.

She leaped up and yanked open the front door. “Where’s Ariel?”

It came out in a bark.

Gabriel stopped halfway up his steps next door. The fierceness of his face softened, barely, but enough that she noticed.

“Portia.” Nothing else. Just a note of relief.

She looked at him, just looked, frozen for a tiny second as if she could do nothing more than memorize all that beautiful harshness of him, the strong jaw, the dark eyes, the dark hair winging back, the obstinacy, imprinting him on her mind.

But then the relief was gone, and the man in control returned. “We need to talk.”

“Gabriel, where is Ariel?” She ran down the stairs, then up his.

He scowled at her. “In her room.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I am.”

“Have you seen her?”

“What? Why should I? She’s been in her room for hours doing homework.”

“You know that for a fact? You haven’t left?”

He frowned at her again. “I went downstairs once, to talk to Anthony.”

“Anthony was here?”

“Now that it’s vacant, he wants your apartment.” He said it flatly, unforgiving, as if it were her fault that the apartment was free.

Her jaw went tight. “You might as well give it to him. It obviously isn’t mine.”

He hesitated, his tension palpable. “I should have told you about owning the apartment.” As if this was all he had to say.

“Yes, you should have,” she snapped. “Though obviously I’ve been an idiot about everything regarding the apartment.” She laughed bitterly. “I should make a list of how rock-bottom stupid I’ve been. Let’s see: I married the kind of man who would forge my signature to betray me. I moved into the place and set up shop, all the while not realizing I didn’t own it. You did! But, hey, it gets better! The whole time I was staying there, I didn’t realize that the guy I was stupidly falling in love with was giving me free rent to pay for all the free sex he was getting!”

“Fuck,” he breathed.

“Yep, fuck,” she snapped. “Convenient, huh? You didn’t even have to pay cab fare to get me home. God, could I be any more stupid!” she practically shouted into the air. “I fell for the same kind of guy! Twice! For once, why can’t I meet a man who’ll be honest with me?”

She marched past him to the front door, hating him, hating that she still wanted him, hating that he wasn’t the man she had believed him to be. And the minute she made sure everything was all right with Ariel, she would move farther away and cut Gabriel utterly and completely out of her life. She would not be stupid any longer. “We’re going to check on your daughter.”

The outer door was locked and she didn’t have a key anymore. She had set it on the counter when she left. She turned back. Gabriel just stood there, staring at her. As always, she had no idea what he was thinking, but his jaw was rigid.

“I know you don’t believe me,” she stated, “but humor me. Open the door, Gabriel.”

He pulled out his key, came up next to her, and turned the lock. But his arm blocked her way when she tried to enter.

“Now what?”

He touched her cheek barely, softly. She tried to jerk away, but she was trapped by his other arm. Gabriel stared at her forever, not allowing her to look away. She could see the emotion in his eyes. “We are going to talk about this, Portia. As I said, I should have told you. At some point you have to forgive me.”

Her jaw dropped as she stared at him.

“Say something,” he stated, his voice strangely rough.

Just forgive him? Like all he had to do was command her and she’d do his bidding?

“I think,” she said deliberately, “that there is absolutely nothing to be gained from us talking. Now move aside.”

His mouth went tight, but he moved.

Portia raced up the stairs, fighting back the burn in her eyes.

“Ariel?” she called, knocking on her bedroom door, Gabriel coming up behind her.

He knocked, louder than she had. “Ariel?” He turned the knob and pushed in. “Ariel!”

The room was empty, books lying out on the desk, the window to the fire escape open. A piece of paper was lying on Ariel’s desk.

Portia says that sometimes you have to be brave and dig deep for answers.

Gabriel’s jaw leaped, fury in his eyes. “What the hell is she talking about?”

Portia’s head spun with images of food and flowers. “Violets,” she whispered. She shut her eyes and concentrated. “And watermelons. Lots of watermelons.”

“What are you talking about?”

“At your old house. In New Jersey. Ariel told me she and her mother planted violets. Then watermelons, and the watermelons went wild and took over the entire patch.”

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed, as if he were trying to remember. Something snagged. “What does that have to do with Ariel and this note?”

“She’s gone home.”

“Home is here.”

“She thinks New Jersey is home, and she’s gone there.”

His face was a mask of disbelief mixed with denial, like grapefruit mixed with cayenne pepper. “You’re telling me that my twelve-year-old daughter fled to New Jersey to return to our old house?”

“She’s nearly thirteen,” Portia said. She almost laughed but it turned to a strangled cry. “I think so.”

“You think?”

“Yes. She’s been searching for answers for a while.”

“Answers to what?”

“I don’t know. But whenever Anthony was around, she was asking questions.”

His jaw worked. “About what?”

“Her mother.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” He leaned close, his expression harsh, his voice clipped. “Why the hell did you encourage her to ask questions?”

She refused to let his anger scare her. “A better question might be, is there something for her to find?”

He rocked back. “Damn it!”

She saw anguish in his eyes and she almost reached out—but managed to snatch back her hand. “I’ll take that as a yes. You need to find Ariel. And I would start at your old house.”

“Just like that. Because you thought of watermelons.”

“And violets,” Portia added.

“That’s crazy,” he snapped. “Hell, you are crazy. Ridiculous.”

Crazy. Like her grandmother.

In yet another way, this man was no different from Robert. He wanted her to be normal. Not that any of it mattered anymore.

He pulled out his phone.

“Who are you calling?”

“Miranda. She’s at a friend’s house.” He pressed a number, put the phone to his ear, then waited. He cursed. “Voice mail.”

He strode out of the room and downstairs. He found a phone number scribbled on a piece of paper, then dialed.

“This is Gabriel Kane, Miranda’s father. May I speak to my daughter?”

Portia watched as tension rose through his body.

“She’s not there? She told me that she was spending the night.”

More listening, fury building.

“Please ask your daughter if she knows where Miranda is.”

The words were polite, but the tone was not. She could imagine that whoever was on the other end scrambled to do his bidding.

“What the—” He cut himself off. “Thank you.”

He disconnected and looked at her. “Miranda and her friend aren’t there. According to a brother, the girls are in New Jersey. Throwing a party.”

“Ariel must have followed her.” She met his hard gaze. “Some things are true, whether you believe them or not. Now, go. Find Ariel and Miranda.”

He muttered a curse, then took her arm.

“What are you doing?”

“Like you said, I’m going to New Jersey. And you’re going with me.”

Forty

ARIEL WALKED UP the front path, the gentle curve of flagstone winding through the lawn, blue-black against the deep green grass. The weather was almost cold, much cooler than it had been just thirty minutes away in the city. She shivered and pulled her backpack tighter to her body.

The oversized front door was still painted red with giant black hinges, the mullioned glass inset like a portal to the way life used to be—as if her mom would be waiting on the other side. But if her mom was home, there wouldn’t be teenagers drinking beer on the lawn.

Her entire body deflated, those stupid tears burning again. She made herself stop thinking about her mom. Miranda was in so much trouble if anyone found out about this party. With the drinking and everything, she’d probably be grounded for life.

As soon as Ariel walked through the front door, music hit her along with the smell of alcohol and smoke. No one gave her so much as a second glance. She walked through the entry and then three steps up into the main foyer. To the left, kids sprawled on sofas and chairs in the giant living room, white dust covers ripped off and tossed aside, lying around on the floor like melting ghosts. Two guys laughed as they tried to build a fire in the fireplace. Bags of marshmallows, a box of graham crackers, and a stack of Hershey’s chocolate bars sat on the hearth.

They were going to make s’mores? In the fireplace? Did they think they were at summer camp or something? Idiots.

Ariel jerked away and crossed into the dining room. Two teens sat at the long dining table, beers in front of them. Ariel ignored them and walked on into the kitchen. But Miranda wasn’t there either, or in the den just beyond that.

Retracing her path to the foyer, she weaved through a knot of teenagers as she started up the stairs. Halfway up was a small landing with a window seat. From the large, multipaned window Ariel could see the lights of Manhattan in the distance. For a second she just stood there, looking.

Growing up in New Jersey, she hadn’t given any thought to the city. She knew her mother thought it was the greatest thing ever to have the view. Looking at it now, it made Ariel feel all the lonelier. A year or so ago, she would never have believed that she wouldn’t still be living in this house. That her mom would be gone. That she would have moved to the city that had always seemed like a whole other planet, regardless of the fact that she could see it out the window.

A year ago, she never would have believed that her uncle would claim he was her father. Maybe she could ignore it? Would her uncle regret having said the words, maybe pretend he hadn’t said them at all?

But Ariel wasn’t going to take any chance that things could go haywire, catching her unaware. If the truth was here in this house, she was going to find it.

“I am not a baby,” she told herself, climbing the rest of the stairs to the second floor, music thrumming up the walls, smoke following her. “I am not afraid of what I’m going to find.”

Though the truth was, she was scared out of her wits. She could hardly believe she’d gotten herself down to the Port Authority, on a bus, then a taxi, and was now getting ready to dig around in her mom’s study. Dad was going to kill her.

Which brought her back to the fact that Dad wasn’t her dad. Or so Uncle Anthony said.

She felt another one of those disconcerting surges, like she disappeared just a little bit more. Shaking it off, she slipped into the study, closing the door behind her with a click. The music faded away as she walked to the big wooden chest that sat low on the floor, the hinged top covered by a thick cushion that matched the curtains.

Carefully, Ariel pried open the top, images flashing through her memory of the last time she had snuck into the room. She had been home sick from school, just a month before her mom died, and had woken from one of those feverish naps. The house felt so different in the middle of the day, during the week, the neighborhood weirdly quiet. She had woken up and went to find her mother, discovering her kneeling in front of the chest.

“Mom?”

Her mother had jerked up. At the sight of Ariel, she had dragged in a deep breath. “Damn it, Ariel!”

Ariel had flinched. Her totally proper mother cursing, her mother who always said anyone who cursed was white trash. Of course, now it turned out that Mom had grown up eating out of tin cans instead of with silver spoons.

Back then she’d been confused by her mother’s anger. But now, Ariel thought about her mom growing up in the Amsterdam Houses, and wondered if the outburst had been from guilt. She’d probably been hiding that box … or whatever it was.

Ariel tucked her hair behind her ears, then rummaged around inside the chest, but found nothing. Not that she had expected to find anything there. Her mother had been specific about Ariel finding something behind it.

She lowered the top, then grabbed the edge of the chest and pulled hard, tugging it away from the wall. There wasn’t any box she could see. The wallpaper was just barely darker, not faded, but other than that, she didn’t notice anything different. She dropped to her knees and ran her hand down the pattern of vines and roses, slowly, feeling. Her heart pounded. The wall felt normal.

She sat back on her heels, trying to figure out what she had gotten wrong. Her mother had said the memory chest, she was sure of it. Leaning forward, she ran her hand down the wall again, this time even slower. Then she felt it. A seam, a break in the wallpaper over a tiny door.

She broke out in a sweat. A burst of laughter from downstairs startled her. She glanced back, but the door to the study was still closed.

She ran her hand along the seams, but didn’t find a handle. Frustrated, she banged and it popped open. She squeaked in surprise, then peered inside. Her heart squeezed again when she saw a box at the very back of the space.

“The box,” her mother had said to her. It had just been the two of them in the car, blood all over, Ariel staring in shock.

She pulled the box out with shaking hands. Her fingers shook as her thumb pulled back the metal clasp. The lock was stiff, and at first the lid wouldn’t give.

When Ariel finally pried it open, she found a big manila envelope. It wasn’t sealed and inside she found a to-do list, a key, and two smaller envelopes, one with Gabriel scrawled across the front. The other was addressed to Mr. Carter Davis. Underneath that, her mom had written Bell, Longo, Lynch and Smith, LLC. Lawyers.

Do not read, Ariel told herself. None of it was addressed to her. Her mom had said to give it to her dad. And no question, just like everything else, she knew she totally didn’t want to know what was written inside either one of these letters. But she also knew she couldn’t hide anymore from the stuff she didn’t want to know. If she turned the letters over without reading them herself, her father would never let her in on whatever secret her mother had hidden.

Wasn’t learning the truth the whole reason for coming all the way out to Montclair in the first place? Hadn’t Miranda coming out here for whatever stupid reason given her the courage to follow? To find out? It seemed like a sign that it was time.

She read the to-do list first.

1. Get copy of the will

2. Make copy of Anthony’s document

3. Call C. Davis

Since it looked like everything was still here, and there was no sign of a will, Ariel assumed her mom hadn’t finished whatever she had been doing.

Swallowing, she opened the letter to the lawyer first.

Dear Mr. Davis,

I got your name from a friend I used to know when my father was still living. He said you were discreet, and could help me. This is something I have needed to deal with for some time now, but haven’t had the first clue how to do it. I am getting a copy of my will. I would like you to add an addendum based on documents I’m supplying. I’ve also included a letter to my husband. Once everything is completed, I would like you to hold on to the entire package. If something happens to me before I can deal with this situation in a better way, please give the letter, documents, keys, and amended will to my husband.

Thank you,

Victoria Polanski Kane

Ariel took a deep breath and then slid her fingers under the flap of the second envelope, her chipped and half-painted nails taunting her as she broke the seal. Her hands shook even more as she pulled out the letter and started to read.

Gabriel,

Not Dear Gabriel, or Dearest Gabriel. Just his name. Short. Harsh. Impersonal. She hated that.

If you’re reading this, something has happened to me, which hardly seems possible as I write these words. But that’s not the point.

Will it surprise you if I said I was never brave enough? I never was, not really. I’m still not, as writing this letter instead of telling you to your face proves. But here’s the truth: I never meant to hurt you or the girls. In my own way, with this key and letter, I’m trying to fix things. Believe it or not, I really do try to be a better person, even if you would swear that I rarely succeed.

Ariel felt as if her mom’s frustration and anger boiled from the page. All that stuff, that emotion between her parents that she had never let herself see.

I know as I write this that eventually I’ll have to fix things in a better way than this letter I’m going to give to a lawyer. But I haven’t been able to bring myself to tell you what I’ve done. I’ve worked hard for years to keep my secret.

Frankly, I plan to live a long life, so with any luck you’ll never know that I was a fool. I always said “Fake it ’til you make it.” I wonder if that ever works, or if we end up spending our lives trying to be someone we’re not. Who knows? But I do know that when it came to the Kane brothers, Anthony believed in me. Your brother loved me for the drama of me. You never believed. You hated the drama. Why couldn’t I have just wanted Anthony?

The truth is, I wanted you all along, even though it was Anthony who made me feel alive. Of course you never wanted me. I knew that. But I wanted you anyway. I knew you’d give me the life I wanted. So I got you the only way I knew how. I was young and pretty, and had the sort of hunger that most hardscrabble, scared girls have, which isn’t so hard to understand, given where I came from. I knew what I wanted and was determined to get it. That’s all I could see. I never considered who might get hurt in the process.

Of course you remember that drunken night when I seduced you and ended up pregnant. You thought I was shallow, and you hated me after that, but you married me anyway, as I was sure you would. From the moment I met you, I knew you were a man who took his responsibilities seriously. THAT is what I did love about you. And I wanted that responsibility to be me. You would give me the life I wanted. You would be my prince to my Cinderella. Foolish, I know. But isn’t that every poor girl’s dream? Anthony would never be able to do that for me. I thank my lucky stars every day for that night, for Miranda. And I thank God you couldn’t have loved Miranda more. It’s to your great credit that your resentment of me never spilled over to our daughter.

Proof that Miranda was Dad’s real daughter.

Ariel’s stomach lurched; she hated the truth, not that she really wanted Miranda not to be legit. It was just that Miranda being legit proved that Anthony hadn’t lied about that part.

Her heart pounded, but she kept reading.

That wasn’t my only sin. I also knew you hated that Anthony thought you seduced me to win me away from him. I’m still amazed that you never told Anthony the truth: that I seduced you.

If I’m really truthful, I loved that he was madly jealous that we married. Do you understand the draw for a girl like me to have two men seeming to fight for me, even if one of the men wasn’t really fighting for me, but for his unborn child? And when you never forgave me—always made it clear that I had tricked you, even if it was through your stoic silence—is it really a surprise that I would seek out the only man who did make me feel beautiful and loved? When you married me, I swore that I would never sleep with Anthony again, and I swear I wouldn’t have if you had ever tried to love me. Do you get that part of this is your fault?

In the end, yes, I went back to your brother. Does it matter that it wasn’t right away? Does it matter that we both knew by then that our marriage was falling apart?

Of course it doesn’t. But even then, I was given a gift. This time, it was Ariel.

Ariel moaned out loud, her fingers curling into the paper. She squeezed her eyes closed, every inch of her growing hot and sick and hurting. But she couldn’t stop now.

Just as with Miranda, you loved Ariel from the moment she came into the world. I saw the love in your eyes as you held Ariel for the first time. I never had the heart to tell you Anthony was her father, not even as a way to hurt you more when I still couldn’t find a way to make you want me. But Anthony knew, and I’ve paid dearly to keep him quiet.

But that’s the past.

Anthony Kane might love me in his own equally selfish way, but he cares more about himself and money than anything else. Do not, I repeat, do not ever let him convince you otherwise. If you are reading this, then I’m no longer in a position to continue funneling money to Anthony in order to keep Ariel safe. Please don’t let him hurt her. Please don’t let him use her to hurt you. Hopefully by the time you read this, I will have been able to pull it all together so that you have everything you need to make sure he can’t.

I have done a lot of things I’m ashamed of. Despite how I got them, the best thing I have produced in my life is our daughters. Ours. Yours, Gabriel. Both of them. I can only hope my sins won’t get in the way of you keeping both of them safe.

Victoria

Ariel couldn’t breathe. What did it mean? How could Anthony hurt her? A scream pounded inside her, wanting to get out. Panic licked at her as her greatest fear was realized, the one that she had been too afraid to say out loud: Anthony really was her father, and Gabriel Kane didn’t know. Yet.

After he read this, would he turn her over to Anthony?

“No,” she whispered.

Her fingers closed around the small key, deciding she should figure out what the key opened before she told anyone about it. Inch by inch, she went through her mom’s study, biting her lip hard to keep the tears away. Maybe her mom had a safe somewhere with money to pay off Anthony. She picked up decorative boxes and frames filled with photos—photos of her, Miranda, Dad—looking for something that needed a key.

There was nothing. Her mom would never have hidden the box or whatever it was in the bedroom, not the one she shared with Dad. Ariel stuffed the envelopes in her backpack and left the study. She peered down the stairs. Most of the kids were in the living room playing weird dare games. She could just make out a girl shoving marshmallows into her mouth, one by one, the kids egging her on and then laughing when she spit them out. Seriously, idiots. But there was no sign of Miranda or Dustin.

She ran down the stairs, through the dining room, through the swinging door into the kitchen, then into the den. A bunch of kids were in there now, but still no Miranda. Ariel kept going to the stairway leading to the basement.

Nerves made her slip and clatter down the thin wooden staircase, catching herself on the banister, stumbling into the dark space, but she managed to find the tiny chain that worked the lightbulb. The bulb cast a weak light, not much, but she managed to find a flashlight, then went through the basement. She was hardly breathing as she went through old metal lockers with no locks, cabinets, boxes. Nothing that needed a key.

“Damn, damn, damn!” she cried, slamming the lid on a trunk, dust puffing up in the dank air.

Crashing down onto a low work stool, she dropped her head into her hands. She was covered in dust and grime, her wild hair tangled, her clothes filthy. But she still didn’t have what she needed.

She sat up all of a sudden. Would their mom have told Miranda something? Was that why Miranda had said they would talk later?

Ariel hurtled up the stairs from the basement, her backpack banging side to side on her shoulders like a pendulum as she ran. In the den, two kids were now making out on the couch, the TV blaring, beer cans lying about the tables like crumpled tin soldiers. She raced through the swinging door from the den to the kitchen and then to the dining room and found a girl crying at the table, a friend trying to console her. She didn’t stop. In the foyer, another girl stood on the stairs sipping a beer, a guy leaning up against the banister, probably trying to convince her to go upstairs to one of the bedrooms.

Ariel ran past them. Her shoulders had started to ache, so she pulled off her backpack as she entered the living room. Just then a cheer erupted, startling her. Two boys were stuffing the fireplace with old newspapers and flicking burning matches onto the paper. Every time they got a leap of flames, they cheered.

These dopes were still trying to make s’mores. “You can’t do that! You’ll catch something on fire!”

They didn’t even look at her.

Two girls sat on the hearth, pulling out the graham crackers and chocolate, shoving marshmallows onto a couple of pens. The fire was messy, ash getting everywhere. Just the sight of the chocolate made Ariel desperately wish she was back in New York, sitting at the counter island in Portia’s kitchen, watching her work her magic with food. If only she’d never come out here.

If only she’d never gotten in the car with her mother.

Tears beat behind her eyes like prisoners trying to escape. Someone started retching and she jerked around. A kid was vomiting into one of her mom’s decorative brass pots. Three boys circled around him, laughing hysterically. “Lightweight! Lightweight!”

One of them held a bottle of vodka. Probably her dad’s. Already empty.

Just then, one of her mom’s tasseled pillows flew by her head. “Who the fuck are you, little girl?” a boy shouted, from where he slouched on the sofa, beer can in hand. Another boy, somehow looking older, sat there, his brow furrowed.

She dropped her backpack and picked up the pillow, hugging it tight. “None of your business. Where’s Miranda?”

A bunch of them whipped around to face her.

“Freakin’ A. It’s Miranda’s sister.”

Ariel hardly recognized Miranda’s new friend Becky. She had on a ton of makeup. “What the hell are you doing here?” Becky demanded. “You’re supposed to be in the city.”

“Becks,” another girl said. “Cool it.” Then she smiled at Ariel, sweet, too sweet. “You want to play with us, Miranda’s sister?”

“No. And you better get out of my house before I call the police.”

The girl just laughed. “Seriously, you’re not that uncool, are you? Come on, do shots with us.”

Her face felt hot and sweaty, her heart pounding even harder. “Where’s Miranda?”

“What a baby!” Becky said, turning away. She saw Ariel’s backpack and yanked it up. “Do you have any money in here?”

Ariel grabbed for it, but Becky leaped out of the way and started pawing inside. Journal, pens, multicolored socks spilled out. “That’s mine!” Ariel yelled.

“We need money for booze,” Becky said, staying out of reach. “Your dad’s a freaking millionaire, everyone knows that. But all he had in this place was a few stinking bottles of Ketel One.”

Ariel grabbed for the pack again, but Becky smirked and tossed it to another girl.

Ariel pivoted and leaped for the other girl, who only laughed and threw the pack over her head to one of the guys, who tossed it to another kid in the foyer.

It was like a game playing out in slow motion, until she realized that Becky was laughing even harder. She turned around to find the girl was holding her journal.

“‘Musings of a Freak,’” Becky read, giggling madly. “You are a freak.”

The music swirled through Ariel’s head like notes swimming through melting marshmallow. It took a moment to figure out that this awful girl was reading her thoughts out loud—her frustrations, her hopes, her fears—for everyone to hear. Part of her was mortified, and some other part pulsed with fury. But something else clawed at her and stung her nose.

Smoke still puffed out into the room instead of going up the chimney. The boys making s’mores didn’t seem to care. One of them threw back a shot, then tossed his plastic cup into the fire, making the smoke smell so bitter she could taste it on her tongue.

“Hey, moron—” she heard someone say, but then a big pop sounded and the fire flared up, and still none of the smoke went up the chimney.

“Shit,” one of the boys said, falling back a step.

“Yeah,” another said. “Son of a bitch, you’re a moron.”

Somebody threw a glass of beer on the fire, but it didn’t go out.

“Oh, no,” Ariel cried, swiping her nose with her sleeve, as it only got worse. She grabbed a beer can from the table and ran forward, too, but the can was empty. The fire popped, a flying ember hitting her sleeve. She stared in shock as her shirt started to burn.

“Damn.” The cool boy from the sofa pushed up, tore off his jacket, and wrapped her arm with his coat. Then he grabbed a full water bottle from his pack and threw the contents onto the flames, and the fire sizzled and hissed as it went out. “Seriously, morons,” the guy muttered.

Ariel dropped the empty can, and still, she couldn’t do anything but stare, her mouth open.

The guy leaned down and looked her in the eye. “You’re okay, kid. Got it? Now go home. Get out of here. You’re too young to get involved with this crazy shit.”

Her lip trembled.

“You’re fine, kid, really.” He straightened and shook his head. “I’m out of here. If you want a ride, this is your chance.”

She couldn’t move. She wasn’t fine. Nothing was fine.

He shrugged and headed for the door. “I’m out of here.”

She lost it then. She started crying in big, gasping sobs as she staggered back from the hearth. She dashed at her eyes, swiping away soot and tears and a year of holding on by a thread.

She didn’t care what any of them thought of her. She couldn’t stop crying. It was all of it, the one tiny gesture of kindness from a stranger who walked out the door, the forgotten house, her mom, the dad who wasn’t really her dad, the lies she hadn’t known about, the life she didn’t know how to fix.

Somebody put a hand on her shoulder and she twisted away, facing the fireplace, her body racked by tears, gasping as she tried to catch her breath. But all she managed to suck in was smoke.

With a gasp of surprise, she felt her lungs squeeze, her throat going tight. Her eyes burned, and she felt them start to bug out. She told herself not to panic. She wheeled back around, looking for her backpack. Looking for Einstein. But he wasn’t there. Her backpack was gone.

She opened her mouth to cough, but it wouldn’t come, just more smoke filled her mouth and nose.

The kids started to murmur, their faces distorting. But she couldn’t move. Her legs felt wobbly, sounds overloud in her ears.

“What’s wrong with her?” she barely heard.

“Stop being a freak!” Becky shouted.

“I think she’s having some sort of fit. Crap.”

“She’s probably epileptic. She’s gonna froth!”

“Damn, get me out of here.”

The voices swelled in her head before growing distant. Then all of the sudden she saw Miranda run into the room. Ariel wanted to weep in relief when she felt her sister’s hands grabbing for her, hands circling her arms, rough and frantic. But a second later she realized that it was too late. Her head swam, the prisoners behind her eyes finally going quiet, the world going black.

And she disappeared.

Forty-one

AS SOON AS Gabriel turned the Mercedes onto the narrow residential street, Portia knew for certain something was wrong. She felt it in the vibration of her thoughts, violets and watermelon flashing through her mind in a kaleidoscope of dread.

Gabriel must have felt it, too. He cursed beneath his breath and hit the gas, every ounce of civilized man falling away.

Portia had never been to New Jersey, much less to Montclair. The full moon cast silver light on the giant old houses that were set back from the road, built far apart, a gracious lawn rolling up to a sprawling Victorian with brilliant white latticework, followed by a stately redbrick Colonial, and finally a beautiful old Tudor, its slate roof shining like blue-black water in the bright night. The opposite side of the imposing street dropped off in a gentle cliff to even larger houses in the distance below.

Outside the Tudor, cars lined the road, lights blazing inside.

“The party,” Gabriel bit out, slamming on the brake in front of the house.

Portia saw the teenagers coming and going. Gabriel double-parked in front of what she assumed was the Kanes’ New Jersey house. Cars filled the long, narrow driveway that disappeared around back. Gabriel raced to the front door.

Portia was right behind him, unease filling her like hot water rising in a pan. It wasn’t the idea that someone was throwing a party at Gabriel’s house that concerned her. Something else quickened her pulse, a kind of horror that she couldn’t name.

They were halfway across the lawn when kids started barreling out the front door, running and yelling at each other.

Gabriel pushed past them like a beast possessed, Portia at his heels. At some level the opulence of the house registered along with the dread, the sure knowledge that she didn’t belong to this world, to this family. Robert’s sprawling home was nothing compared to this stately mansion, her family’s double-wide as foreign to this world as a mud hut on a Burmese hillside.

“Dad!”

Portia’s heart stood still when she ran into the living room. Miranda was a mess of tears and wrecked hair, mascara streaming down her face, looking like a crying child playing dress-up.

“She’s dead!”

Gabriel fell to his knees. When he did, Portia saw Ariel on the floor.

His roar filled the entire house as he pulled the girl into his arms. “What have you done?” he demanded.

“I didn’t do anything!” Miranda cried, hugging herself.

Portia felt an odd calm come over her. She pulled out her cell phone. “Has anyone called 9-1-1?”

“I already did,” Miranda managed, dropping down next to the girl and their father. “You have to fix her, Dad. Oh, God, it’s my fault! Ariel! Wake up!”

Gabriel started CPR.

Kids were still running, a boy pounding down the stairs, towing a half-dressed girl. The music was nearly deafening, so Portia turned it off.

Then there was silence except for Miranda’s sobs and Gabriel’s measured counting as he blew air into Ariel’s lungs and compressed her chest.

Portia sank onto her knees beside them. She took in the room, smelled the air. She turned back to Ariel. “Her lips are blue around the edges. It’s an asthma attack. Where’s her backpack?”

Gabriel and Miranda went stiff at the same time. Miranda leaped up. “It’s got to be here somewhere!”

But the kids had evaporated. Ariel’s backpack was nowhere in sight.

Gabriel raised his head, his hands compressing Ariel’s chest with gentle force. “The yard,” he ordered. “Someone dropped something in the yard.”

Portia flew back out of the house and spotted Ariel’s backpack lying in a forgotten heap in the dark. She careened back inside, ripping through its contents as she went until she found what she was looking for. She dropped down next to Gabriel, who grabbed the inhaler and put it into his daughter’s mouth. He shot it once, then twice, then clamped his mouth over hers and resumed CPR.

Forty-two

ARIEL SWAM in a murky place, where sound was muffled and light seemed overbright. But the worry, all the worry she had felt since the accident, was gone. She still felt the buzzing, but she was no longer a bee stuck in a jar.

She felt at peace.

This was where she wanted to be, a place where things were easier. This was what she had been moving toward ever since the accident, with all those horrible feelings slowly disappearing.

She had been right. She had disappeared, just like Mom.

For so long she had been afraid, but had refused to admit it. With the fear and worry suddenly gone, she felt herself expanding, as if she were flinging her arms wide and taking a deep breath.

But on the heels of that peace, she felt a tinge of panic trying to pry its way through the calm. Could she really leave her dad? Miranda? Even Portia? Would they be fine without her? Would they care?

“Ariel!”

The roar echoed in the quiet that surrounded her.

“No!”

She felt the vibration of the words against her body more than she heard them.

Dad?

“Ariel! Damn it, come back!”

For long seconds she felt the words, felt the way they surrounded her and pushed away the quiet. She felt torn between the peace and the wish to stop the pain she felt coming at her in a wave. The push, then the pull. The need to stay gone, the pull to go back.

Then all of a sudden, she saw her dad’s face in her mind with that look he had at Mom’s funeral when his mouth distorted and she knew he could have cried but wouldn’t. Of Dad sitting at the breakfast table reading The Wall Street Journal, the way he had lowered the paper and raised a brow when she inquired if he was interested in having cocktails that evening, only to go back to reading without a word. Her dad, who didn’t get ruffled by anything. Her dad, who she felt certain hovered over her now. Crying.

The world flooded back into her a startling gasp of breath, and she cried out in surprise. Air burned as it rushed into her lungs.

“Dad?” she managed, her tongue thick, her head light. She felt hot and cold all at once, and like she was going to be sick to her stomach.

Her father was leaning over her. “Ariel.”

Not a question. A statement. But with the world coming back into focus, she remembered everything that was wrong, the peace gone.

He wasn’t her dad at all.

Misery ripped through her as all the pieces jarred back into place. First her mom had been taken away. Now her dad. She wanted to go back to the quiet. She wanted to scream that it was all unfair. She wanted to tell him she would be the greatest daughter ever, that she’d do better this time at being perfect, that he’d be better off keeping her rather than giving her away.

But what if he didn’t want her? What if he didn’t want to deal with the trouble of always paying Anthony? How she wished he would never learn the truth.

She struggled to open her eyes. The minute she succeeded, her dad hugged her tight. “Oh, God,” he whispered, making her feel safe for the first time since the accident.

“Dad?”

“God, Ariel,” he said into her hair. “As soon as I get over the relief I feel right now, you’re going to be in a mountain of trouble for running away.”

“So you’ll ground me?” she managed, wanting nothing more than her dad’s infamous go-to form of punishment, anything to make her feel that their lives could be normal again.

He half laughed, half cursed, and held her tight.

Then Miranda came into view next to Dad’s shoulder. “Ariel, I’m sorry!” she said, her voice warped by a sob. “I was so stupid to come out here. And it was stupid that I didn’t come find you the minute I heard you were in the house. I—I almost killed you!”

Ariel shook her head, the effort making her senses spin. “No, you didn’t.”

Ambulance guys rushed in then, moving Miranda and her dad back.

That’s when she saw Portia just looking at her, a strange mix of relief and sadness on her face. “Hey, kiddo. Welcome back.”

As if Portia actually understood that she had gone, might not have returned.

Ariel smiled at her, feeling sort of shy, wanting to reach out, realizing that the one person she could have talked to all this time was Portia. She would have understood. Portia got all those things that weren’t ordinary, like food that meant stuff, and how people could disappear.

But then her thoughts circled back to what she had found. As much as she didn’t want to tell her dad about it, she couldn’t be like her mother. No more secrets.

She pushed at the ambulance guy. “Dad?”

“What is it, Ariel?”

“I found a box Mom hid. It had a key and some letters in it.”

Dad didn’t seem to care. “Sweetheart, let the paramedics finish checking you over. We can talk about it later.”

They started in on her—blood pressure, checking her eyes, temperature—then had her hooked up to an IV in record time.

“Quick onset, quick recovery. But to be on the safe side,” one of them said, “she should be observed for twenty-four hours. We’ll take her to Overlook.”

“What?” Ariel said, her throat still burning. “Overlook, like the hospital? I can’t go there. I have bigger problems. I found letters from Mom. And a key,” she repeated.

The paramedics and Dad looked at one an other, and the paramedics fell back.

“What letters, Ariel? What key?”

“So,” she began, hesitant, nervous, though her voice was getting stronger, the itch less intense, “you see, Mom told me I had to find the box.”

Her dad got an even weirder look on his face.

“I don’t mean she told me anything after she died. In the car, after we wrecked, before the police got there, she told me to find the box in her study.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, his voice pained.

“I didn’t want to know.” Ariel tried to feel less stupid than she did right then. “But mostly, I guess, I didn’t want Mom to be dead, and not finding the box made it less real.”

“Who are the letters for, Ariel?”

She bit her lip, trying to push herself up to sit cross-legged, but her dad didn’t let her.

“Fine,” she exhaled. “Technically, one’s for you. The other’s for a lawyer.” Then she rushed out the rest with a heave of breath. “But she told me to find the box, so I figured—”

“Ariel,” he said, cutting her off, “let me have the letters.”

As reluctantly as she had done anything in her life, she told him they were in her backpack. Once the pack was retrieved, he pulled the folded envelopes out. He read all of it. He swallowed hard, his throat working. Then he read the one to him again, and looked at her.

She told herself to have a little pride. Raising her chin, she said, “I guess I should call you Mr. Kane.” She choked on the words, her voice clogged and raspy. “Too formal? How about Uncle Gabriel?”

“Oh, God,” he whispered, pulling her back to him before setting her just far enough way that he could look her in the eye. “I’m your dad, Ariel. Always your dad.”

Tears burned even hotter. “But the letter—”

“No buts. I raised you. I loved you from the second you were born.”

“But Uncle Anthony—”

“Forget my brother, Ariel. You’re my daughter, in every way that matters. And I keep what is mine. Always.”

The words were fierce. “Really?”

“Really.” He pulled her close. “You’re mine, A.”

It was sick possessive, but she had never liked her dad’s whack-job bossy thing more than she did right then. She would have done her best to throw herself at him, despite the IV tube, but she couldn’t. Not until the whole truth was out there. She couldn’t leave it half done.

“Dad,” Ariel whispered, not wanting to tell him the even bigger secret that she had tried to tuck away and forget, the last bit of poison she had refused to tell the Shrink, had refused to write in her journal. “Mom wrecked because of me.”

His whole body went stiff. “What are you talking about, Ariel?”

She glanced over to where Portia was talking to Miranda, who was still crying. “I found Mom with, um, Anthony.”

Her dad went completely still, and she felt the panic creep up again.

“Please explain.” Short, clipped words, but her words spilled out in a rush.

“Miranda had gone into the city on a school trip. Mom forgot I only had a half day at school, then a Mathlete competition, so I walked home. And I, um, saw them, together.”

His eyes narrowed. “I’m going to kill him.”

“I waited outside for him to leave, so he wouldn’t see me. When he left, I told Mom I knew. That I saw. That I was going to tell you.”

Tears started streaming down her cheeks before she realized she was crying. “I was mad. I gave her the car keys and said—” The words stuck in her throat.

“What did you say, sweetheart?”

He looked at her with his craggy face, so fierce, but in that way he had that made her feel like he could do anything in the whole world.

“I told her if she was finished screwing Uncle Anthony”—she shuddered at the words—“that maybe she could find a few minutes to take me to the Mathlete competition.” Ariel did her best to keep her voice steady, truthful. “Mom slammed into the car, mad.”

Ariel had gotten in the backseat, just as angry. But her mom had acted like she wasn’t even in the car, like she was invisible. Mom hadn’t said a word about Anthony. No explanation, no promise that Ariel shouldn’t worry, or that they would talk about it later. “She was really mad, her hands clenching on the wheel.” She hesitated. “I might have been sort of mad, so … I asked her if she wanted me to tell you before I competed or after. Mom jerked her head back to look at me then. She turned away from the road, Dad, and started to say something to me.” Ariel drew in a deep breath. “You know the rest.”

Her dad’s jaw worked, it seemed, like for a century. Finally he said, “Ariel, listen to me, and listen good. None of this, I mean none of it, is your fault. It’s my fault, and your mother’s fault. And Anthony’s fault. But never yours. Do you understand me?”

Her eyes burned, relief washing through her, and she managed a nod, even if she wasn’t entirely sure she believed it.

Portia must have thought they were finished talking, and she walked over. “You go with Ariel to the hospital,” she said. “I’ll drive Miranda back to the city and stay with her until you and Ariel are done.”

Dad looked up. “Portia—”

“Gabriel, give me the keys,” she said, stepping back.

Ariel watched as he stared at Portia, then nodded. “You’re right. You and Miranda should go back. As soon as Ariel and I finish at the hospital, I’ll call a car service.”

He glanced at Miranda with a ferocious look, but at the same moment he stood and extended his arm. Miranda ran to him, and he pulled her into his chest.

“This isn’t over,” he said. “But we’ll fix it. We’ll fix whatever’s wrong. Okay?”

Miranda hiccupped another sob, and nodded against his shirt.

Dad looked over her head at Portia and started to say something.

But Portia turned away, and Ariel saw a bunch of emotions race across his face. Anger? Frustration? Whatever it was, he definitely wasn’t happy.

“Come on, Miranda,” Portia said. “We’d better hurry.” She took Dad’s keys, then leaned over to Ariel. “Glad you’re okay, kiddo.”

Then she was out the door, Miranda in tow, Dad staring after her and looking like he wanted to punch the wall.

It took hours, but after another IV solution of some kind, and getting checked on every five seconds, eventually Ariel got the okay from the emergency room doctors to leave. But once they did, she and her dad didn’t go home. It was somewhere around four in the morning. They went to a hotel near the hospital, just in case she had to go back in.

Which she wouldn’t, but it made her feel better to have her dad fussing over her so much. Maybe he really did mean to keep her.

She took a long bath in a tub that was like a small pool while Dad went downstairs and managed to get someone to find them something to eat.

Finally, clean and fed, wrapped in one of the hotel’s giant robes, Ariel curled into her dad’s arms and looked up at him. He was sitting on the bed, his head back against the headboard. He seemed really tired, and it made her worry.

“Dad,” she whispered.

He didn’t open his eyes. “Hmmm?”

“I’m sorry I was the one who told you about the Uncle Anthony thing.”

He didn’t answer at first. “I already knew.”

She jerked in his arms. “You already knew? For how long?”

“He told me six months after the funeral.”

Exactly when they’d moved into the city. She took the information in, processing. “Is that why we left Montclair?”

“Yes. I wanted to be closer to you and Miranda.”

“So he couldn’t show up and take me while you were working in Manhattan?”

“Ariel, nothing like that is going to happen.”

“But what if … what if Uncle Anthony fights for me? You know, because of money, or something.”

He looked at her then, and that ferocious power thing he did so well was back. It didn’t scare her at all, only made her feel weak with relief.

“There is no amount of money that will get in the way of you always being my daughter, Ariel.”

“Is that what you two keep talking about? Is that what you want him to sign? Something that says I’m … not his?”

He pulled her closer. “Like I said, no matter what, you are my daughter. Don’t ever forget that, Ariel. But, yes, I intend to make it legal.”

“And that’s how Uncle Anthony keeps getting money out of you? Like blackmail? Like he was doing to Mom?”

She felt him tense. “Let me worry about my brother. I will always take care of you. Can you trust me? Will you stop running around town trying to solve mysteries and let me do it for you?”

She blinked.

“Yep, I know all about your adventures.”

“Are you mad?”

“I’m only angry at myself for not having gotten this dealt with sooner.”

Ariel felt the vise around her chest ease. And just like the night she had fallen asleep in his study back in Manhattan, Ariel tucked herself even closer. She felt so tired, like all the energy she had used to keep things together had seeped out of her, in a good way, and she thought that finally she would really sleep.

“I bet you’re going to rethink the whole no–cell phone thing now,” she whispered as she drifted off.

She was almost sure she heard him laugh.

They headed out of the hotel in the morning and a car was waiting in the front drive. But instead of giving their address in Manhattan, her dad gave an address in Montclair.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To the bank.” He held up the key she had found. “It’s for a lockbox.”

“How can you tell?”

“I used to have one just like it at a bank here in town. I never knew your mother had her own.”

They walked into the bank and were ushered into a private area, a box pulled out and waiting on a table.

“Are you ready?” her dad asked.

Biting her lip, Ariel nodded.

Her dad took the key and opened the box. Ariel let out her breath in a rush.

“It’s just papers!”

“Documents,” he said as he began to read. When he finally set them down, he looked sort of angry, but also relieved.

“Your uncle Anthony signed over guardianship to me years ago. Though it cost Victoria to keep him quiet. She obviously intended to get it all to a lawyer so that if anything happened to her, there wouldn’t be any confusion, but she didn’t get it done in time.” For half a second, intense anger flushed out everything else on her dad’s face, but he swallowed it back. “After Victoria died, Anthony must have realized that no one knew about the documents, including me, so he started on me.” He cut himself off after he seemed to remember Ariel was sitting there.

He leaned over and cupped her face. “All that matters,” he stated, “is your mother made sure that legally, I’m still your dad.”

Forty-three

PORTIA HEARD A CAR pull up out front, then the outer door of the town house opened, and her heart surged into her throat.

Neither she nor Miranda had slept much in the hours since they’d returned to the city. Even though she was sure they would have said yes, Portia hadn’t wanted to impose even further on Stanley and Marcus by asking that they put up both her and Miranda. Plus, Miranda would want to be at home so she could see that Ariel was okay the minute she returned. So Portia had stopped by next door to say good night, and then returned to the town house. She felt surrounded by memories in the house, the memory of her great-aunt and the memory of what she had thought she shared with Gabriel.

Miranda had fallen asleep on the sofa. Portia had hunkered down in an overstuffed chair, reminding herself that this house wasn’t a home, not the kind where she belonged, with its perfect, expensive fabrics, sterile of emotion despite the rich materials and heavy silk.

After a few hours, she had realized she wasn’t going to sleep at all, so she had gotten up and gone to the kitchen. Eventually Miranda had followed, and the two of them sat there, not saying much, until the front door opened.

Miranda leaped up and flew down the hall. Portia drew a deep breath, then followed.

When she came out into the hallway it was just in time to see Miranda throw herself at her dad and sister. “I’m sorry!” the teen cried.

Looking on, Portia’s heart twisted. She loved the girls and would miss them. But after everything that had happened, she knew she had no future in this house.

As if sensing her thoughts, Gabriel glanced up. His eyes drifted over her, dark, assessing, as if trying to understand what she was thinking.

“Dad,” Miranda said, drawing his attention.

Portia didn’t wait to hear what the girl had to say. She used the distraction to make her escape.

She slipped past the three of them, heading for the front door.

“Portia,” Gabriel stated, hard and clipped, like a demand he expected to be obeyed.

She went faster.

“Portia.” This time softer, mixed with a sigh.

Portia didn’t care. She raced out the front door, literally running over to Stanley and Marcus’s.

Stanley raised a brow from his place by the window when she walked in, and Marcus bustled her over to the sofa, plopped down beside her, and said, “Tell me everything!”

Portia caught her breath. “Marcus!”

“You can’t hold out on me, not after all the Little Debbie cakes I gave you! I am dying of curiosity. You didn’t give us one single detail last night! Granted, it was late, but now, out with it!”

She sank back against the cushions, suddenly exhausted. “Miranda went to New Jersey. Ariel followed, had a bad asthma attack, and ended up in the hospital overnight. She’s fine now. There.”

“Glad to hear it, but now I want the good stuff,” he demanded. “What happened with Gabriel? Tell me he groveled at your feet, apologizing up and down for not bothering to mention he owned your apartment!”

“No, no apology.” She pursed her lips. “Not that an apology solves anything.”

The words were barely out of her mouth when her cell phone rang.

Kane, Gabriel.

She pressed ignore with relish. When she glanced up from the phone, Stanley and Marcus were looking at her. “What?” she said.

“You’ll have to talk to him sometime.”

“No, Marcus, I won’t.”

Marcus cringed.

Not two minutes later, someone was at the front door.

Stanley glanced out the window, then exchanged a glance with Marcus. This time it was Stanley who struggled up from the chair while Marcus gathered their coats.

“Where are you going?” she squeaked.

“No more hiding, Portia. Gabriel’s a good man.” Marcus paused and gave her one of the very few frowns she’d ever seen on his face. “True, he should have told you about owning the apartment. But he’s still a good man. Deep down, you know that.”

They hurried out the door, letting Gabriel in, but not before she heard Stanley growl, “You hurt her again, and you’ll answer to us.”

Once the door shut, Gabriel stepped forward. There was nothing soft and approachable about him. “We are going to talk, Portia.”

“There’s no point.” She started to turn away, but he strode forward and took her arm. Not hard, not bruising; unrelenting, but oddly gentle. “You will listen to me. You owe me that.”

All her careful calm evaporated. “I don’t owe you anything! I’m not the one who lied and betrayed you.”

“Damn it, I’m trying to apologize!”

She gasped her disbelief. “Last I heard, apologies don’t start with barked-out orders!”

He visibly reined himself in, and let her go. With a few quick steps, she moved away.

He raked his hands through his hair. “I’m trying, Portia. I don’t know the first thing about nice or simple. Charm. That’s my brother’s domain. I’ve always been hard.” As if that made it better. “I know I’ve messed up at every turn. With you. With my daughters. Christ, I nearly lost one.” The entire frame of his tall, hard-chiseled body shuddered, every bit of searing anger draining out of him. She felt his pain. She thought of the way he was when he made love to her, the control she knew he didn’t believe he could afford to lose.

She wanted to reach out, but kept her hand at her side.

He stepped forward. She stepped back until she hit the wall. He didn’t stop until he was inches from her. He took her in, assessing in that way he had, this time as if to determine if she was safe, as if he couldn’t afford for someone else in his life to be hurt.

“Move away, Gabriel.”

“That’s not going to happen,” he said softly. “We are going to talk. I am going to apologize. You need to stop running away from me and listen.”

She met his gaze defiantly. “I don’t need to do anything other than tell you to leave, because, apology or not, we’re over.”

He flinched, but didn’t relent. “We haven’t even begun, sweetheart.”

“Don’t ‘sweetheart’ me!” She tried to step sideways, but again he blocked her.

Then, as if he was giving in to something he fought, he ran one hand up her neck, his palm cupping her face, his thumb brushing over her cheek. She felt the tremor rush through his body, the heat that hit her. “If I could do it all over again,” he said, his fingers sliding into her hair, “I would.”

“But you can’t,” she snapped, forcing herself not to look at his mouth.

“I know that. I screwed up. I get that, too. And now I’m trying to explain. Something I haven’t done a lot of in a long time.”

“Ah, so the great Gabriel Kane, who doesn’t answer to anyone, will deign to explain. And I’m supposed to be all excited about this big emotional breakthrough?”

His dark eyes went hard. “That isn’t what I meant, Portia.”

He looked at her, his jaw cemented before his eyes drifted to her lips. She knew he wanted to kiss her. Her heart sped up.

“I meant that it’s not easy to explain because I hardly understand myself. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what I feel, or why I couldn’t bring myself to tell you I already owned the apartment. Not any of it. But from the first time I saw you sitting on the front steps, wearing those flowered shoes, something about you … spoke to me. Hell, I’d been dead for years, long before my wife died.” He hesitated, as if searching for words, but clearly believing he had to. “Seeing you sitting there, I felt something … intense. Not long after, I recognized that if I let it happen, I would come to need you.” His gaze hardened. “I don’t do need.”

“That’s great,” Portia said with a scoff, refusing to let up, unable to let up. She couldn’t afford to. “You’re just what every woman wants.”

“Don’t, Portia. Don’t keep throwing this back at me.” His face was ravaged. “I’m doing the best I can. I’m trying. At least give me that.” He waited a breath, and when she remained silent, he continued. “I denied what you made me feel. Hell, I fought it tooth and nail. But every time I told myself to just tell you that I owned the apartment and kick you out, I couldn’t. And that infuriated me. How had I become so weak? It’s only been by not being weak that I’ve succeeded in life. Who the hell am I if I wasn’t the strong guy? Look at this face, Portia.”

Her breath caught in surprise.

“Is this the face of a man who can afford to be weak?” he demanded. “No, it’s not. I learned that as a boy. But that’s the thing: The minute you saw me, without having any idea who I was, or that I had money, you looked at me in a way I had never experienced before. You couldn’t have been drawn to my money, because you had no idea who I was when you first saw me. You saw me walking toward you, I saw you see me. I saw the way you looked at me. Drawn in. You wanted me, Portia. I felt it. I saw it. And when you learned I had money, real money, the kind you needed, you wanted nothing to do with it. Do you know how amazing it was to me that you didn’t want my money? Hell, you wouldn’t even cash the check that I had to force you to take. Anyone else in your position would have snapped up my offer of financing—”

“Offered without believing in me,” she interjected, holding on to her anger, hating that her heart was melting.

“But I gave you a check. It doesn’t matter how it was offered, because you didn’t want a penny of it anyway. Every day I have people who want a piece of me, but only for my money. Even my mother, my brother.” He hesitated. “Even my wife. All they want or wanted from me was my money.”

She swallowed back the ache she felt for him. She wanted to tell him there was beauty in every strong and harsh plane of his face. It got harder to hold out. Her fingers itched, not to bake, but to touch him. But on the heels of that thought came another. The reality of Gabriel’s Meal, a reality that she wanted to run from, but couldn’t. How could she after she had watched her grandmother being struck down by lightning based on a meal, the scar on her shoulder a reminder if she was ever inclined to forget?

Her heart slowed at the thought, a deep settling of resolve. As much as she loved him—and she knew she did—as much as she ached for him right then, despite what he had done to her, her grandmother’s entry proved all the more that Cuthcart meals spoke truths.

The meal she had prepared for Gabriel had been followed by a very different kind of storm. Gabriel’s Meal had been the beginning of a total unraveling of both their lives, starting with the fight between Gabriel and Anthony and ending with Ariel nearly dying, the arrival of the inspector squashing her dream sandwiched in between. Gabriel’s Meal had spelled disaster.

“It’s too late for us, Gabriel. You betrayed me. You lied to me.” Emotion and pain swelled, pushing her on. “But the fact is,” she stated, “you said I was ridiculous. Crazy.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When I told you that Ariel was in New Jersey. You said, ‘That’s crazy. Hell, you are crazy. Ridiculous.’”

She could see by his expression that he remembered.

“And you didn’t say it in some flip way. You looked me in the eye and I saw that you believed it. Admit it, Gabriel, you think I’m odd. Different. Ridiculous. Deep down, you don’t believe in me. That makes you no different from my ex-husband. You both want me to be someone I’m not, someone who fits into a normal box, someone who doesn’t know things because of food. My husband said I wasn’t normal. You used different words, but you said the same thing.” She had never felt so sad. “So no, despite the fact that all you have to do is touch me and I melt, despite the fact that I fell in love with you, madly, deeply, in a let-you-eat-crackers-in-my-bed, shouting-Stella-from-the-courtyard sort of way, there is no future for us.” Her voice broke. “I deserve better than men who think of me as lesser than them, when they bother to think of me at all.”

“Portia—”

She saw the pain in his eyes, but she didn’t let up. “I deserve better than men who want me to fit whatever they think suits their particular life.”

He stared at her hard, and she could see the truth sink in. And still, she didn’t let up. “I thought you were a different kind of man, Gabriel.”

He flinched.

She sucked in her breath, hating this, but held his gaze. “I fell I love with you, Gabriel. But you only thought of yourself. I deserve someone who will love me just the way I am. Now, please, move away. I want you to leave.”

She saw the moment he realized she was serious, that she wasn’t going to be convinced. After a long furious, aching second, he nodded.

He left her then, without looking back. And her heart broke a little bit more.

Forty-four

“ROBERT BALEAU, please,” Portia said into the phone, Stanley and Marcus standing on either side of her.

The woman who answered hesitated, then asked, “Who may I say is calling?”

Portia grimaced, glanced at Stanley, who scowled at her, then raised her chin. “His ex-wife.”

The woman gasped. “Portia, is that you?”

Portia’s stiffened. “Rayna?”

“I knew it! Portia, darlin’, how are you?”

“I’m fine, how are you? What are you doing answering the phones?”

“Well, you know how you had to stay on top of everyone around here to get them to do their jobs. Now you’re gone and that Sissy—” She cut herself off. “Let’s just say that things aren’t running too smoothly around here.”

Portia had heard just that after a woman who used to work for Robert had tracked her down and offered her a bit of good fortune.

Rayna sighed over the phone. “He has me doing everything from answering the phones to dealing with the press. Lordy, do I miss you. And not just because without you things are a mess. Are you really okay?”

Portia searched for a cheerful voice to answer. “I’m great.” She glanced at Stanley and Marcus. “And I’m about to be even better. Is Robert there?”

“Let me see—”

Suddenly Portia heard Rayna cover the receiver with her hand, but not before she heard Robert’s familiar bark in the background.

Rayna came back, this time as proper as when she had first answered. “Yes, Mr. Baleau is in. I’ll put you through.” But just before she transferred the call, Rayna whispered into the phone, “Miss you.”

Then the clicks before Robert bellowed into the phone. “Portia! It’s about time you returned my calls.”

As if she were a child reprimanded by an adult. It sank in that it had always been that way between the two of them, more so the longer they were married. She felt the sting of embarrassment.

Stanley must have sensed something, because he leaned forward and rasped, “We didn’t spend the last twenty-four hours teaching you how to not be a nice girl to have you fall apart the minute you get on the phone with that guy!”

She squeezed her eyes closed. Their lessons didn’t have one bit in common with the “ladylike behavior” her mother had drummed into her head. But even she had figured out that her mother’s pilfered etiquette book was for the birds.

Every ounce of embarrassment and fury rose up, pushing every trace of devastation she felt over the loss of Gabriel aside. Never in her life had she wanted to kick someone’s tail.

“It’s time you pay what you owe me, Robert.”

Stanley nodded.

Robert scoffed into the phone. “What are you talking about, Portia?”

“You owe me for the apartment!”

A surprised pause before, “Portia, you’re upset—”

Stanley and Marcus waved their hands, shaking their heads. “Do not get upset!” they hissed.

“Me? Upset? Why would that be, Robert? You divorced me. Then you married the only friend I had in Willow Creek. Fine, that’s your prerogative. But it’s not your prerogative to withhold the money you owe me, both from our marriage settlement and the proceeds from the sale of my apartment—and let’s not even discuss my forged signature.”

“Portia, you need to calm down.”

“Robert, I am calm, calm enough to tell you that I want the money you owe me wire-transferred into my bank account before the end of the day. I know exactly how much you got for my apartment, and I want every dime from the sale, as well as interest from the date of closing. Capisce?”

Stanley rolled his eyes. Marcus snickered. Sure, it was a little much. But she was on a roll.

Robert must have sensed that she was serious. Ever the consummate politician, he reined in the moral outrage and replaced it with something that had served him well in the past.

“Portia,” he said, his tone aggrieved. “I feel terrible that you and I have come to this. But there is no reason for you to be going on so.”

“Let me repeat myself: You must deposit every dollar you owe me in my bank account by the end of the day.”

She could all but see him, nearly two thousand miles away, formulating yet another new move, a master playing chess. She was half certain he was enjoying himself.

“I don’t have that kind of money readily available.”

“Then you’d better find a way to get it. If you don’t, I’ll make sure your constituency learns you’re a lying, cheating manipulator. I’m not so sure those same voters you say love you are going to be thrilled to reelect a man who swears he supports the sanctity of traditional marriage but got one of his employees—his wife’s best friend, at that—pregnant while he was still married.”

“I know you, Portia,” he snapped, his patience spent. “You didn’t fight me before. You won’t fight me now. Nothing’s changed. At heart, you’re still a poor girl from a trailer park, raised by a crazy grandmother.”

She laughed, which she knew he hadn’t expected. “Maybe so. But what has changed is that I’m dead serious. Mark my words, I will tell the media about Sissy, but I’ll tell the police about how you managed to sell my apartment. In case they don’t teach basic law in that fancy law school you graduated from, forgery is illegal, Robert.”

There was a moment of silence. “You wouldn’t do that.”

“Why on earth wouldn’t I?”

She heard him draw a sharp breath. “You have no way to prove I spent a second alone with Sissy before I divorced you. Or how do you think you’re going to prove I forged your signature. It’s a perfect match.”

“But that’s the thing. Someone always knows the truth. You know that staffer you got to notarize my signature on the real estate documents? F. Don Whitting?”

The phone line crackled with a tense silence.

“Do you think for a second that if the district attorney’s office starts poking around and asking questions, F. Don isn’t going to cave and admit that you made him do it? I know you, Robert. I know how you operate. Plus, I just so happen to have all the proof I need to make a believer out of your constituency about Sissy.”

She had obtained that proof of his infidelity from the fired employee.

“You can’t do this!”

She nodded to Marcus, who pressed send on an ancient fax machine they still had attached to a second phone line, sending through a photograph showing a very naked Robert and Sissy, with a date stamp in the lower right corner.

“If I were you, Robert, I’d race to your fax machine and snag the proof before someone else sees it.”

Robert cursed before the phone clattered on his desk. Portia waited, Stanley looking smug, Marcus delighted, until her ex-husband came back on the line.

“You can’t do this!” he railed.

“Granted, it’s a little low-tech in this day and age of sex videos, but I’m guessing it will do the trick. Call your lawyer, Robert. Tell him to release my money or I’ll start making some calls of my own. Police first, the Texas press second. You have until the end of the business day.”

She hung up before he could respond, and Marcus and Portia danced. Even Stanley smiled.

Forty-five

AS FAR AS Ariel could tell, her dad had really messed things up. And the guy was supposed to be smart.

Once they got back from New Jersey, instead of solving things, her dad had gone over to see Portia and obviously made things worse. He had stormed back into the house and started ripping apart the basement apartment like a man obsessed with erasing every little bit of the woman who used to live there.

On top of that, he was erasing even more of their past by putting the New Jersey house up for sale. She ached a little bit at the idea, because it was like her mom had finally been put to rest. But she also didn’t think she would ever be able to walk back into that house anyway. So why not sell it?

Now, three days after the whole asthma debacle, she came home from school to find piles of old linoleum on the front curb, waiting for the garbage truck. One more piece of Portia ripped away.

She dropped her backpack in the vestibule, then found her dad in Portia’s apartment, the place a wreck. He wore a dust mask and seemed to be taking the walls apart with a crowbar.

“What is it, Ariel?”

She stood there in the dust and wrecked surroundings, trying to decide the best way to proceed. “How’s it going?”

She couldn’t read his expression because of the mask, so she just shrugged and walked around the place, just like how she had walked around looking at things the first time she snuck in while Portia and her sisters were sitting around eating.

“Ariel? What do you need? Rosalie made some cake and left it out for you.”

Rosalie had started yesterday, replacing Portia. Not to be mean or anything, but nobody could cook like Portia, and they all knew it.

“I’m fine.” She shrugged again.

He jammed the crowbar into the top of a piece of molding.

“You know, I was wondering,” she said, proud at how casual the words sounded.

He stopped what he was doing and shot her a narrow-eyed look. She refused to let it get to her. This was too important.

“How did you find me? In New Jersey?”

He got that odd look he was getting a lot lately. Ferocious mixed with determination.

“I mean, who would have guessed. New Jersey? Seriously? You found me in New Jersey all by yourself? Ha-ha.”

“What are you getting at, Ariel?”

“Me? Getting at something?”

“Spit it out.”

And she did. “It just seems to me that you must have had some help.”

“Portia told me where to find you.” He turned around and gave the molding another sharp jerk. Nails squealed.

Of course she knew that, or at least suspected it, and hadn’t she proven she was a majorly great sleuth?

“Really?” She pretended surprise. “How’d she know where I was?”

“She said she knew because of food. And flowers.”

He sounded weird, which was super insane since Portia had been doing bizarre things with food ever since she’d landed in their town house, just as she herself had already told him.

“Portia’s good at that, you know, doing uncanny stuff with food,” she reminded him.

He just grunted, attacking the wall again.

“You remember that, right?” Ariel said.

He just gave her a look and told her to go upstairs before he slammed the crowbar back into another innocent-looking piece of molding.

“Men,” she grumbled, marching out the door.

The weather started getting cold, and it looked like pretty soon it would start snowing. Her dad just kept ripping away at the garden apartment. While he’d had a whole crowd of people slaving away on their part of the town house months earlier, he was using his own two hands to rip apart the downstairs. Every day he worked down there, and every night he sat at the kitchen table after she and Miranda had cleared away the food he had cooked.

Yep, he was cooking again. Rosalie had lasted barely a week before she had called them impossible and had departed. Ariel and Miranda had made plans, or colluded, as a good detective would say, to run the woman off. Sure, both of them felt bad about it, but someone had to do something to make their dad see the light.

Instead of seeing the light, however, and clattering off to Portia and convincing her to come back to them, he just added cooking back to his list of duties. It was insanity, really, since even he admitted he was a horrible cook and they’d probably all keel over with food poisoning any day. That, or starve.

Even more insane, Miranda had started helping him renovate the garden apartment. No sooner did Miranda get home from school than she changed and headed downstairs like a regular Mini Me Construction Girl.

Ariel told herself it was ridiculous to be jealous. Dad had chosen her to be his daughter, even when he didn’t have to.

The other surprise? Uncle Anthony.

“You know I love you, kid, right?” he said to her when he appeared one day in their kitchen, Dad looking like a ferocious, overprotective bear despite the apron he wore, since he was in the middle of making another awful dinner.

Ariel wasn’t sure what to say to that. She looked at Anthony closely, trying to decide if he was the kind of guy who wanted the truth or a platitude. The thing was, she didn’t have any idea what was in his mind.

“Sure, I know.”

He gave her a wry look. “You’re just saying that.”

“Isn’t that what you want to hear?”

“Nope. The fact is, I do love you, kid. Ariel.” He glanced over at Dad, then bent down in front of her. “But I make a better uncle than a father. Do you understand that?”

Actually, she did, and she couldn’t have agreed more. The tiny knot that had stayed inside her after having read one too many online articles about birth fathers wanting their kids back even after having signed them away eased.

She threw her arms around the guy’s shoulders. “Thank you for letting me go, Uncle Anthony.”

He held on tight for a long second, nodded at her dad, and left.

Later she had overheard her dad tell Nana that he’d given Anthony the money he wanted, even though all the new and better documents were already signed. Which made her heart buzz even more because her dad wanted her that much. Granted, it was not so buzzworthy that she obviously had a blackmailer’s blood sloshing around in her veins. But she figured she was smart enough to beat it back if the need to con money out of people suddenly started rearing its ugly head.

After hanging up with Nana, her dad walked back into the study. He looked surprised to find her there. But she’d finally had it. He had fixed the Anthony thing. He was nearly done fixing the garden apartment. But, hello, why wasn’t he taking all of her hints and fixing what was really wrong?

“You know, we’ve discussed how incredibly smart you are,” she said without preamble.

“Why do I suspect I’m not going to like where this is going?” he said cautiously.

“I think you’re stressed.”

Up shot one of those eyebrows of his.

She hurried on. “Maybe with all that construction stress you’re under downstairs, you haven’t been totally able to figure out on your own that you need to do whatever it takes to get Portia back. Maybe it’d help if I made a suggestion.”

“What kind of suggestion?”

“Groveling.”

He skewered her with his eyes. “Groveling?”

“Yep, groveling, to Portia. And don’t bother saying you don’t grovel, Dad, because really, like I said, you’ve got to do whatever it takes. We need Portia. I do. Miranda sure as heck does. And, well”—she scrunched her shoulders—“I hate to break it to you, but you need her most of all.”

Forty-six

PORTIA STOOD ON Columbus Avenue, arms raised to the gently falling snow, reveling in the mounting signs that her life was falling in place.

After growing up in Central Texas, she had virtually no experience with snow. She tilted her head back, feeling the brush of snowflakes against her skin.

Straightening, she looked into the windows of what used to be Cutie’s Cupcakes. The awful pastries had finally taken their toll, and when they did, the place had closed down and the space had gone up for rent. Yet another sign.

First, Robert had actually paid her the money he owed her. Then, just when she was ready to make a move, this perfect space came up for rent.

The minute she saw it, Portia had pulled out her cell phone right there on the street and called Cordelia and Olivia.

Since that day, the three Cuthcart sisters had worked tirelessly around the clock getting The Glass Kitchen ready—the real one, not the illegal one in a residential building. They’d taken on not one but two investors, using Portia’s money to hire a financial planner who made everything legal and set up an agreement that made sure Portia’s money would be repaid out of the first profits. She planned to buy an apartment of her own as soon as she could.

They were starting out small, mostly baked goods and a few entrées. Hopefully, with a combination of Portia’s knowing, Cordelia’s chatty advice giving and constant supply of helpful books, and Olivia’s ability to fill the space with the perfect assortment of flowers, not to mention network, they would soon be able to expand.

For the moment, Portia was living in a small rented apartment of her own, pretty close to The Glass Kitchen. Everything was going better than expected.

But still, she felt empty, even standing around in falling snow in front of a dream that had finally come true.

Of course, she knew why.

She hadn’t heard a single word from Gabriel since he’d walked out of Stanley and Marcus’s door a month ago. She should have been relieved. But all she felt was miserable.

Pulling her coat tight, she locked the doors of The Glass Kitchen and hurried the few blocks to her new apartment. Taking off her mittens, she checked her voice mail. The first message surprised her.

“Portia, hi,” the recording announced. “It’s Miranda. Miranda Kane.”

As if Portia could forget.

“I just thought you should know that Dad is using the kitchen. As in, he’s cooking. I talked to Ariel about it, but she’s being totally weird. She might have said something about how you, as a self-respecting adult, should be, like, trying to save me and her from Dad’s cooking. Or something. All I know is that we are starving over here.”

Portia heard the sound of Miranda unwrapping a piece of candy, as if her world was moving on and she needed to disconnect but didn’t know how to break the tenuous connection. The thought tugged at Portia.

“I’m totally not into missing anyone, but Ariel misses you. I can tell. Whatever. I just thought you should know.”

Portia didn’t call back. What could she say? The girls had lost so much, and she felt guilty to be part of it. But calling them only prolonged the inevitable. She wouldn’t ever be a part of their lives.

The next day she worked all day. The Glass Kitchen was packed. She should have felt joy, but by closing time, she felt a strange sensation, like she was getting sick. Worse, all she could think about was food. More specifically, Gabriel’s Meal kept circling back into her head, like some cruel reminder of what she could never have.

The kitchen staff had already left, and Olivia and Cordelia had departed early, though not before Olivia had shaken her by the shoulders.

“Portia, you know I love you, but you have to stop moping around.”

Portia could hardly argue, so she just gave her a lopsided smile.

“Yes, you do,” Cordelia had added, gathering her things. “And may I point out that while the store is crowded, it’s crowded with widows, Portia.”

“What?”

Olivia bustled close. “You didn’t notice? It’s not just widows. There was that poor woman whose son just died after a heart operation.”

Portia did remember—how could she not, when the woman had burst into tears at the sight of the cupcakes with little trains on them that she had made. They had both cried before the woman took away six cupcakes so her family could celebrate her little boy’s favorite treat.

“What are you saying?” Portia asked carefully.

“It’s like all your buckets of sadness are bringing lines of mourners to The Glass Kitchen,” Cordelia explained. “It’s not bad, Portia. Lord knows, you’re making them feel better. But I kind of miss a smile now and then, you know?”

Her sisters left her standing there speechless, until she finally turned around and started cleaning an already clean counter. A week’s worth of customers started marching through her head—the eighty-year-old man with the exhausted eyes, the two women whose mother had just passed away …

“Crap,” she said when she realized her sisters were mostly right. But the customers had all been grieving for someone they had lost. There was that man whose wife left him with a devastated five-year-old son, and that teenager who …

She snapped to attention when the bell rang and the door opened.

“We’re not open—”

As she spoke, she turned and froze. Her hair was wild from a day of cooking and baking, and now cleaning. She looked awful and she knew it.

“Gabriel.” She hated the breathy sound of her voice, the way her heart kicked up.

Of course he was still beautiful in that way she loved. Hard, craggy. Strong, as if with him she would always be safe. That was what had drawn her to him, right from the beginning. A beast would never let anyone hurt her.

Until he had.

“We’re closed.”

“Good,” he said.

He made the point by turning over the little sign tacked to the door with yarn. “Now you really are closed.”

“Which means you should be on the outside of the door. Not inside.”

He flipped the lock.

Portia watched him, her eyes narrowing. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“What I should have done weeks ago.”

He had that way of seeming to catalog each part of her, as if reassuring himself that she was fine, that no harm had come to her in the weeks they had been apart. Portia stayed behind the counter, telling herself that she was above bolting for the side exit. She would deal with him as the adult she was.

“Gabriel,” she said as he walked toward her, stopping on the opposite side of the narrow counter. “I really don’t want to have another argument. Please.”

“I messed up, Portia.”

He’d already told her that, but this time, there was no anger in the words, only a commitment to truth.

“You said I didn’t believe in you, that I didn’t want you to be who you really are. I am going to prove that you’re wrong. I do believe in you. I love you, Portia. I love you for every streak of frosting on your face.…” He bent over the gaily painted counter tiles and reached out to wipe her cheek, his thumb coming away with frosting. She was mortified until he licked the buttercream away, and her pulse leaped.

“I love you for each of the times you pushed me to see some truth I didn’t want to face. For loving me just as I am. For taking care of my girls. For helping me save both of them.”

His hand slid back into her hair and he leaned closer, his mouth hovering over hers. “I am going to prove to you that I listen. I am going to prove that I love you in that madly, deeply, let-you-eat-crackers-in-my-bed, shouting-Stella-from-the-courtyard sort of way.”

Tears burned at the proof he had listened, at least to that.

“I love you for who you are. But I can’t prove it to you here. Come to the town house, then I will prove it.”

She managed to dash away the threat of tears. “You can’t come in here and ask me to go to your house at the snap of your fingers.” She raised her chin. “We are no longer friends with benefits, Gabriel. I’m sorry.”

His features cemented, but not with anger. “We were never friends with benefits, Portia.”

“Oh, that’s right. We were fu—”

“Enough.”

He said the word quietly, but with a strength that resonated through the café. “I love you, and the only thing that’s crazy is if you think I’m going to let the best thing that ever happened to me walk out of my life.”

He bent to her again and his hands ran down her arms. “Come home with me. Let me prove how much you mean to me.”

When she started to resist, he shrugged. With one swift movement he lifted her over the counter as if she weighed nothing, putting her on her feet before him.

She shrieked with the surprise of it. At the same time, visions of the meal, Gabriel’s Meal, danced through her head, taunting her.

“I can’t,” she breathed.

“Wrong answer,” he told her, and actually smiled.

He bent down and had her over his shoulder before she realized what was happening.

“Put me down!”

“Sorry. Can’t. If you won’t walk on your own, I’ll have to carry you.”

“You can’t carry me to your house like this,” she snapped, bracing herself against his back and flailing her legs, trying to get down. “You’ll get arrested!”

“If a cop stops me, I’ll tell them what you’ve put me through and they’ll drag you to the house for me.”

“Ha-ha. If I tell them what you’ve put me through, they’d arrest you and throw away the key.”

“Portia. I’m serious. One way or another, you’re coming with me.”

She made all sorts of outraged noises, but his grip only tightened, like a vise around her legs, and she realized she wasn’t going to win this one.

“Are you going to walk?” he asked. “Or do I carry you?”

“Has anyone ever told you cavemen aren’t attractive?”

“As a matter of fact, Ariel says pretty much the same thing all the time.”

Instantly, she softened, her body easing on his shoulder. “How is she?”

“Missing you.”

“Playing the guilt card?”

“Just telling the truth. Now, can I put you down so you can get your bag or whatever else you need? Or am I going to carry you home?”

He barely gave her a minute to get her coat and handbag.

“Front door’s already locked,” he said. “We’ll go out the side door.”

She glowered at him, but he remained unfazed, and all too soon they were walking up Columbus Avenue. He took her hand. She yanked it away, only to have him take it again.

“The caveman thing. Unattractive. Remember?”

He just laughed, pulled her hand up to his mouth, and kissed it. She hated that it felt good.

When they arrived on Seventy-third Street, the lights in the town house reminded her of how much she loved the place, standing tall like a wedding cake stacked up into the night sky, snow beginning to accumulate like icing on the window panes and eves.

Gabriel pulled her around to face him, his hand slipping into her hair and tugging her head back so he could see her eyes. “This is your home, Portia. You belong here. With me. With us.”

She thought he was going to kiss her, but at the last minute, he pulled back. “First things first,” he whispered.

They took the steps to the outer vestibule. She was surprised when he led her down to the garden apartment instead of straight inside to his apartment. The smell of fresh paint hit her first. Then she noticed the refinished hardwood floor on the stairs, the quaint welcome mat outside the open front door. Then she heard the sound of people.

“What’s going on?” she demanded, her hand flying to her hair.

“You’ll see.”

“I’m a wreck!” she moaned, hanging back.

“Am I going to have to put you over my shoulder again?”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

He went for her, but she scampered back up a step. “Bossy.”

“Stubborn.”

It took a second for her mind to register all the people inside. Ariel, Miranda. Cordelia and Olivia. Even Stanley and Marcus.

Abruptly, the others became aware of her.

“Portia!”

She blinked, trying to take it in. Her friends and family were standing in the garden apartment … which had been completely redone.

“Don’t you love it?” Ariel cried, flinging herself forward and winding her arms around Portia’s waist. “Dad did it all himself.”

Miranda nodded. “With his own hands.”

Ariel stepped back. “Same thing, Mir.”

“It’s beautiful,” Portia said, awed.

“It’s your dream,” Ariel explained, hands on her hips, looking bossy and worried, at the same time. “Not all perfect and professional like those people did upstairs. Dad took everything out, did it just like you wanted, then brought all the old junk back in, fixed up, cleaned up.”

“Just as you described,” Gabriel said, his voice deep with emotion. “I listened, Portia.”

He had, that time they had lain together after making love, talking about her vision for the apartment.

“Oh, Gabriel, I don’t know what to say.”

Gabriel stepped forward and took her hands. “Portia, this is your home. The people here, we are your family. And in this town house, you have cooked or baked or done something for each person here. So I asked everyone to make something for you to show their thanks.”

It was then that she noticed the table, set with the pitted silverware and mismatched dishes.

Stanley straightened, after placing a dish on the table. He took one look at her and grimaced. “Good Lord, woman, is that frosting in your hair?”

“Mind your manners, old man.” This from Marcus, who was making room on the table for a platter.

“I can’t tell you the last time I did anything in a kitchen,” Stanley said, jutting out his chin. “But I did, for you. Because you’re a dear,” he added. “So I decided that I would make the one recipe I know. Sweet jalapeño mustard.”

A jolt went through Portia.

“Can you believe it?” Marcus said. “A New Yorker who makes anything with jalapeños?”

“As you well know, I was born and raised in Texas. I might be old, but I still remember my mother’s sweet jalapeño mustard.”

Marcus wrapped a lanky arm around his partner’s stooped shoulders. “Yes, once upon a time you were a good ol’ boy from south of the Mason-Dixon Line. I made my fried chicken for you, Portia, to go with my beloved’s mustard.”

A chill ran down her spine.

“Miranda and I made biscuits!” Ariel cheered.

Portia couldn’t move. She felt Olivia looking at her for a long beat, her brow furrowing. Then Olivia laughed and came forward, taking her hands, pulling her close, pressing her forehead to Portia’s. “Some things are true whether you believe them or not,” Olivia whispered just for her.

Portia’s breath let out in a rush; then she threw her arms around her sister.

She then pivoted to face Gabriel. “But how did you know?”

His brow furrowed. “Know what?”

“The meal. You—this is the meal. It’s your meal.”

“What are you talking about? I just asked everyone to bring something for you, something they could make, something that meant something to them.”

Portia swept her gaze over the table. The slaw was there, the buttery mashed potatoes. Each item from Gabriel’s Meal sat on the table, just as she had seen it in her mind—this menu, in this garden apartment that she had loved since she was a child.

She didn’t realize Gabriel had gone to the kitchen until she turned and found him reappearing. Before she could say anything, he held out a dish. “Strawberry pie—”

“With fresh whipped cream,” Portia breathed.

“I made it,” he said. “Can’t swear to how good it is, but I know you love strawberries, and the girls say it’s the only thing I’ve made in a month that was half edible.”

“I can’t believe it,” Portia whispered. “You were the ones who were supposed to make the meal. Not me. That’s why mine didn’t work.”

She looked at each person in turn, and then finally at Gabriel. “This is the meal that came to me when I first saw you on the steps. The meal I tried to make, but ruined.”

She didn’t wait another second. She ran to Gabriel, throwing her arms around him. “We’re meant to be.”

He tipped her head back. “It’s the meal, the food, that’s what convinced you?”

“Yes.” Portia hesitated, holding her breath. “Do you understand?”

He looked into her eyes, really looked. Then he smiled. “What I understand is that the rest of my life will be filled with food, food that answers questions that haven’t been asked yet, food that you know we need before we know why.” He lowered his voice. “You’re mine, Portia, and have been since the day I found you on the steps in your flowered shoes.”

There was a universal groan, and Gabriel glanced over, as if he’d forgotten anyone else was there.

“What?” he demanded.

Ariel spoke up first. “Maybe think about asking her if she wants to be yours.”

Portia only laughed. “The way I look at it,” she said, “he’s mine. The truth of a meal never lies. Seems only fair that I give back as good as I get.”

Gabriel wrapped her in his arms then and kissed her, a deep claim mixed with an even deeper love and respect.

“Get a room,” Olivia demanded with an amused smile.

“Seriously?” Miranda added.

“Sheez,” Ariel chimed in.

“Come, sit, Portia,” Cordelia said, taking charge. “Let’s eat before it gets cold.”

They gathered around the table and ate the meal, every last bite.

Later that night, Portia didn’t return to the tiny rented apartment on Columbus Avenue. She stayed in the garden apartment and crawled into the old bed Gabriel had restored for her. Joy filled her for the first time in weeks when the man she was meant to be with climbed down the fire escape and into her room.

“Girls in bed?” she asked, sitting up.

He nodded and lay down next to her, pulling her to him. “I’m never letting you leave again,” he whispered.

“No more secrets?”

“No more secrets.”

“Can you really live with me knowing things are needed before we know why?”

He rolled on top of her, his hands framing her face. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Then he kissed her, long and deep, and Portia knew she had truly found her home.