Chapter 44

“I don’t want to oversell you on this, but Sadie’s pancakes are a religion.”

I eye Silas, pulling on the cardigan that hangs from my doorknob. “That sounds like an oversell.”

He shakes his head, leans down to kiss me. “You’ll see.”

It’s Sunday morning and we’re in our pajamas; the power’s back on and everyone’s in a celebratory mood about it. Which means, apparently, Sadie’s religious pancakes. When I follow Silas into the kitchen, she’s pulling a carton of buttermilk from the now-functional refrigerator.

“Good morning,” she says, smiling at us as the fridge door falls shut. “You’re both up early.”

It’s 7:06. Puddles woke Silas to take her outside, and then he woke me—quietly opening and closing my bedroom door, nudging under the covers beside me. Getting to be close to him still feels like a trick every time; I’ve spent all summer wanting him and now here he is, mine.

“Puddles is obsessed with the beach,” Silas says. She trots over to the water bowl, and all three of us watch her go. “She keeps acting like she needs to go out just to fool me into letting her get close to the sand.”

“Willful girl,” Sadie says, crouching to scratch Puddles behind one wonton-folded ear. When she stands up, she eyes Silas’s hand on the curve of my hip and raises her eyebrows. He doesn’t move it, but my cheeks go hot.

“Anything you want to tell me?” Sadie asks, rummaging through the upper cabinets and pulling out a paper bag of flour. Cleo and Mick spent the day with Silas and me at the beach yesterday, so they know—but it hasn’t exactly come up in front of Sadie. She’s been away from the house for the most part, working at a café with Wi-Fi nearly an hour away.

“Audrey’s smitten with me,” Silas says, and I twist out of his grip.

“What?” he cries, face split in a grin.

“You’re embellishing.”

“Am I?”

“Yes,” I bite out, but when he yanks me back toward him by the drawstring of my pajamas I go willingly. He’s not wrong, is the unspeakable truth. Ethan might have been my match, but Silas casts light into the shadow parts of me, illuminating rooms I didn’t know I had. I feel different with him, and better.

“Are you using protection?” Sadie asks, waggling her eyebrows at Silas.

I say, “Oh my god,” just as Silas says, “Sadie,” just as my mom walks into the room.

“Who’s using protection?” she says, and I lift a hand to cover my eyes.

“Are you aware your daughter’s agreed to date this questionable figure?” Sadie asks my mom, waving a spatula in Silas’s direction. They share a look, and it makes me feel known. Like I belong to both of them.

Mom does know about Silas, because I told her all of it after we dropped Ethan off in Coral Gables. He’s good for you, she’d said, a response I wasn’t expecting. Silas is everything Camilla St. Vrain isn’t: spontaneous, candid, hiking-sandal-wearing. Well, he’s a boy, I told her. Not a leafy green. She’d laughed in the passenger seat of our rental car. Life’s not salad, Audrey.

“Are you communicating about your sexual preferences?” she asks now, looking back and forth between Silas and me as she makes for the coffee pot. “Asking for what you want?”

“Mom, stop.” I cross my arms over my chest, shrinking away from Silas.

“What, are you embarrassed?” She raises her eyebrows as she pours coffee into a mug. “There’s nothing embarrassing about pleasure.”

Sadie’s laughing, her back to us as she stirs batter in a bowl. I absolutely cannot make eye contact with Silas, and when Puddles waddles over to lick my bare ankle, I just let it happen.

“Sadie, will you pass me the salt?” Mom’s moving on to, apparently, more controversial topics: the horrific way she drinks her coffee. I watch her sprinkle table salt into her mug, but when I turn to Silas to catch his disgust he doesn’t seem appalled at all. Instead, he looks nervous.

“Salt,” he says, and Mom looks up at him. “I’ve only ever seen one other person do that.”

He looks at Sadie, and she’s already looking at him. Something inscrutable passes between them before the moment breaks.

“You too?” my mother asks Sadie, unbothered. “Rounds out the bitterness.” She stirs a spoon in her mug and then steps closer to Sadie, peering over her shoulder into the mixing bowl. “Need any help?”

I feel my eyebrows lift. “You cook now?”

She glances at me. Shrugs. “No, but I can sous.”

Sadie laughs. “Well, if you want to be French about it, you can pass me the sucre.” Mom reaches for a bag of sugar on the counter, and as they both turn toward the stove I lean onto one of the bar stools. My hand lands on something hard and flat in its seat.

Silas has crossed the kitchen, looting through the cabinets for a coffee mug. When I peer beneath the island and lift the front cover of the copy of Letters to My Someday Daughter, there’s only Puddles to see me do it. I recognize Sadie’s handwriting instantly—her neat print, navy ink in the margins. I see my name, Audrey, scribbled mid-sentence, and snap the book shut.

“I need to use the bathroom,” I say, slipping the hardcover under the hem of my T-shirt. When I start to turn away, Silas smiles in my direction. “I’ll be right back.”