Chapter 2
“It’s cold.”
“The oven will fix that.”
“The windows remain closed in the morning.”
“Then the house has been missing the best part of the morning.”
Nathan stared at her.
In seven years, employees had requested permission before moving a vase. This woman was debating the weather with him before breakfast.
“Close them.”
Evie considered him, then shook her head.
“Not yet.”
Nathan was not accustomed to hearing those words.
“Excuse me?”
“The bread needs the air, the kitchen needs the light, and you look like you need both.”
Nathan’s expression hardened.
Evie turned back to the stove as though the conversation were finished.
“Sit down,” she said. “Coffee’s ready.”
“This is my kitchen.”
“Then you probably know where the chairs are.”
Nathan should have dismissed her immediately.
Instead, he remained in the doorway, unable to understand why she was not afraid.
Evie poured coffee into a plain ceramic mug and set it at the table. Then she placed a warm biscuit beside it.
“Ruth said you don’t eat breakfast.”
“Ruth talks too much.”
“She also said you don’t eat lunch unless somebody puts it directly in front of you.”
Nathan looked at the biscuit.
“I’m not hungry.”
“That’s all right. Hunger sometimes remembers us before we remember it.”
He lifted his gaze.
For the first time, something changed in Evie’s expression. The brightness remained, but beneath it he saw recognition.
She knew grief.
Not his grief, perhaps, but the shape of it.
Nathan sat down.
He did not drink the coffee while she was watching. He certainly did not touch the biscuit.
But an hour later, when Evie returned from the pantry, the plate was empty.....
During her first week, Evie violated nearly every unspoken rule of the estate.
She played music while she cooked.
She asked the gardener to bring muddy herbs through the formal entrance.
She opened curtains in rooms Nathan had kept dark.
She greeted him with “Morning, Nate” until the house manager nearly choked.
“My name is Mr. Mercer,” Nathan corrected.
“That’s what people call you when they want something.”
“And what do you want?”
“At the moment? For you to stop standing between me and the refrigerator.”
She walked around him.
The other employees watched with horrified fascination.
They began taking quiet bets on how long she would last.
Three days, said the house manager.
One week, said the gardener.
The driver gave her a month, but only because Ruth had chosen her.
Nathan ignored the wagers.
He also ignored Evie’s music, her questions, and the covered plates she left outside his study.
At least, he pretended to.
On Thursday morning, he found the radio playing an old Patsy Cline song.
“Turn it off,” he said.
Evie lowered the volume but did not silence it.
“I said off.”
She placed a knife beside the onions and faced him.
“Does the music truly bother you?”
“Yes.”
“Look me in the eye and say it.”
Nathan’s jaw tightened.
“I am looking at you.”
“No. You’re looking through me the way you look through everybody else.”
The kitchen became still.
Evie’s voice softened.
“Tell me the music hurts, and I’ll never turn it on again. But don’t make the whole house miserable just because you woke up hurting.”
Nathan opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Evie waited.
When he finally walked away, the radio continued playing at half volume.
That afternoon, Nathan found her behind the house with both knees in the mud.
She was pulling dead vines from a rectangular garden bordered by stone.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to find out what used to grow here.”
“Nothing grows there.”
“Something did.”
Evie held up a brittle stem and rubbed it between her fingers.
“Rosemary.”
Nathan stopped breathing.
Claire had planted the herb garden during their first summer at the estate. Rosemary, thyme, mint, basil, and lavender. She had tended it herself even after their coffee company expanded across six states and the grounds crew offered to take over.
After her death, Nathan had ordered everyone to leave it alone.
He had watched it disappear beneath weeds.
“Stop,” he said.
Evie looked up.
“Leave it as it is.”
She studied his face, then slowly rose.
“All right.”
Nathan turned toward the house.
“But you should know something,” Evie called after him.
He stopped.
She pointed toward the soil.
A small green shoot had emerged beneath the dead vines.
“The rosemary isn’t gone. It was just buried under too much weight.”
Nathan looked at the fragile stem.
“It might not survive winter.”
“It already survived seven of them.”
That night, he lay awake until nearly three.
At last, he went downstairs for water.
A lamp glowed in the kitchen.
Evie sat at the table wearing a flannel robe over her pajamas. A notebook lay open before her. Her handwriting was large and uneven, filling pages with measurements, crossed-out words, and stains.
She looked up.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
Nathan almost denied it.
Instead, he sat across from her.
“What are you writing?”
“My grandmother’s recipes.”
“You don’t have them written down?”
“She never measured anything. A handful of this, a pinch of that. I’m trying to remember before the details disappear.”
Evie closed the notebook.
“She raised me. When she died, I realized half of what she taught me existed only in my head.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
She filled a kettle.
“When I cook her food, she doesn’t feel completely gone. Does that make sense?”
Nathan touched the watch in his robe pocket.
“Yes.”
Evie placed two mugs of chamomile tea on the table.
Nathan looked at the steam.
“I lost someone.”
It was the first time he had said the words aloud in years.
Evie did not offer a rehearsed condolence. She did not ask what happened or tell him time healed everything.
She simply broke a biscuit in half and handed him one piece.
“You don’t have to tell me tonight.”
They ate in silence.
But it was no longer the silence of a tomb.
It was the silence of two people sitting beside the same fire.
When Nathan returned upstairs, dawn had begun to brighten the windows.
May you like
He placed Claire’s stopped watch on the nightstand.
For the first time in seven years, he forgot to wind it.
