She questioned everything: Why was there salt in a piecrust? Why did the butter need to be so cold? She also seemed to appreciate the way I made each cube even and straight, all looking the same. Good girl.

“Okay, now press down on everything with this pastry cutter. It’ll mix the flour and butter together, and then we can add the ice water.”

“Ice water? In a pie?” she asked.

“Remember what I said about using cold ingredients for pastry dough?”

“The colder the ingredients, the flakier the crust,” she repeated, with my exact inflection and tone.

I had to smile.

“How’re we doing in here?” Leo asked, filching a strawberry from the bowl. I swatted his hand, making him laugh. As he ate the berry, he made a face. “Why are these so sour?”

“Because I haven’t added the honey yet. That’s why you can’t sneak a bite till the chef says you can,” I said, reaching for a jar of local honey.

Polly watched it all with wide eyes, then returned to her pastry cutting. Her little wrist turned over and over again in the bowl, her tongue peeking out the side of her mouth as she worked. I was suddenly struck by a vision of Leo doing this exact thing, when he was packing up a farm box on a busy Saturday.

“Bees make honey, you know. You sure you aren’t scared?” Polly asked with a cheeky grin.

I felt my face heat up.

“Can it, Pork Chop; quit making fun of Roxie,” Leo said. “Say you’re sorry.”

She looked down at the bowl. “Sorry,” she said, her voice meek.

“No big deal,” I answered, drizzling some honey over the berries. After tossing them a bit, I told Leo, “Try another one; see what you think.”

He closed his mouth around a berry. “Mmm.”

My cheeks heated again. The last time I heard him say mmm, he was enjoying something else entirely.

“My arm’s tired. Is this almost done?” Polly asked, rubbing her shoulder.

I peeked over her shoulder to look in the bowl. “Looking pretty good. See how those in the corner are the size of peas?”

“There are no corners in a bowl—it’s a circle.” She must have caught a glance from Leo then, because she changed her tone. “Oh yeah, pea sized. I see.”

“Make them all that size, and we’re good to go.” I began to tidy up. “A good cook always cleans as she goes.”

I got a big thumbs-up from Leo on that one. He seemed more relaxed than he was earlier, more at ease with having me in his home, and around his daughter. I wished I felt the same way.

Outwardly I was calm, but inside I was still coming apart at the seams. Processing. Thinking. Second-guessing. Imagining.

And as Polly concentrated on her pea-sized dough blobs, Leo and I had a silent conversation across the island counter.

What the hell, my face said.

Later, his face replied.

Oh, you can count on that, my face assured.

His face responded with either, We can talk later, or We can fuck later. Oddly, they both looked the same.

In the meantime, however, there was an After all, I’m seven years old in the room, and we had a pie to finish.

In the end, a pie was made. Polly was great with a rolling pin, and when the crust tore a little bit, which was normal, she listened patiently as I taught her how to wet her fingers and pinch and smooth it back together. She asked if, when that happened, if it was a good time to dance, and I agreed. So we paused for thirty seconds for an impromptu dance break, to Leo’s great delight. Polly didn’t understand why he laughed so hard, and told him, “Daddy, dancing helps sometimes.” How could he argue with that?

He stayed in the background mostly, fielding phone calls on occasion. I was getting the sense that his taking the day off was unexpected, and I wondered for the millionth time where Polly had been, and why she’d suddenly appeared. The note he’d left in my bed this morning referenced moving cows, gathering strawberries, and getting me green. Nowhere was anything mentioned about daughters piggyback riding.

After the pie went into the oven Polly went out to play, stopping just shy of the back door to thank me for letting her help bake. Now, alone in the kitchen with Leo, maybe I could get some answers.

“I’m hungry—you hungry?” he asked, turning away and rummaging in the pantry. Answers would not come quite yet, apparently.

“I’m not so much hungry as I am confused.”

“Confused?” he repeated, seeming to be determined to make me say it all. To put my shit right out there before he did.

“Confused, as in, what the hell, Leo? Why didn’t you ever tell me you had a—”

The front door slammed. “Can we go down and see the chickens? I want to see if they remember me.” Polly came running into the kitchen, and stopped just short of plowing into me. “I mean, when the pie’s done, of course.”

I knew my limit, and I’d just about reached it.

“You know what, I think I’m gonna take off now. Don’t worry, the timer is set, and remember what I said about seeing the juice bubbling up? When the timer goes off, if the pie is bubbling, it’s ready to come out. If not, just give it a few more minutes. You can help her check on the bubbling, right, Leo?”

“Rox—” he started.

I spun for the door. “I’ll get the baking stuff later. Nice to meet you, Polly.”

I all but sprinted for the door, hauled ass across the lawn, and was backing out of the driveway in the time it takes to say there she blows.

All things considered, I thought I’d handled it pretty well. Until I realized I’d forgotten my purse.

I slowed down to the speed limit. There was no way I was going back now.

Chapter 18

I slammed the pan down on the burner. My knife cut angrily through the butter. I tossed a pat or two into the pan, watching it instantly sizzle.

Dammit.

I added olive oil, swirled the two together, then pressed a sixteen-ounce rib eye into the hot pan. I let it char on one side, while I chopped the parsley as if it had done something personal to me.

Dammit.

I listened to the steak sizzle, trusting my ears to tell me when it was time to flip it as I murdered the parsley. The familiar rhythm of chopping distracted me from the thoughts that were rolling around inside my brain like bowling balls¸ heading down the alley toward my very firmly ensconced pins.

Pin 1. Don’t get involved.

Pin 2. Enjoy the penis. Engage no other organ.

Pin 3. Attachments are for suckers. See also Mom.

Pin 4. Falling in love sucks.

Whoa, whoa, hold the phone there. Falling in love? Who said anything about—

I mentally picked up the bowling balls and threw them through the plate glass window in the bowling alley in my mind.

Dammit!

After I’d left Leo’s I’d driven home, circled the driveway, headed back into town, dropped by the butcher shop, and asked for the biggest, most beautiful cut they had. The Flintstones-sized rib eye was perfect. I scraped my parsley into a bowl and started pulverizing a perfectly innocent clove of garlic.

Innocent, my foot—let’s see what you’re hiding. I pounded and smashed, added a sprinkle of kosher salt, and mashed it all into a beautiful little paste, which I stirred into the parsley, which was glad to no longer be the object of my . . . anger? Was I angry?

Did that parsley just snort at me? I drowned it in olive oil, squeezing a lemon over the entire mixture until it yelled “Uncle!” then whisked it into oblivion.

All to avoid feeling the . . .

Steak’s done! I forked it onto the cutting board, covering it with foil to let it rest while I looked around the kitchen for something else to massacre. Tomatoes. Oh, look at that—tomatoes. Harvested by hand, from plants nurtured in perfectly tilled soil by perfectly bearded hipsters, in the land of organic milk and asshole honey, where everyone was happy and in tune with the earth, and the entire world narrowed down to slow, sustainable, and the concept du jour—local.