Chapter 16

It was a Friday evening in late February, and Shawanda had made jollof rice.

It was the dish she made when she wanted something to feel like home — the particular smell of it filling the apartment from the moment Étain came through the door, tomatoes and peppers and the specific warmth of it that had meant safety since Étain was small. She’d changed out of her work clothes and was at the stove when Étain dropped her backpack by the door and came into the kitchen.

They moved around each other with the ease that had been developing for months — Étain setting the table without being asked, Shawanda plating the food, Gerald relocating from the counter to his preferred dinner observation post on top of the refrigerator. The ordinary machinery of a household that had learned, slowly and at some cost, how to run.

They sat down. They ate.

Halfway through dinner Étain put her fork down.

Shawanda looked up.

“I need to tell you something,” Étain said.

Shawanda set her own fork down. She’d learned, over these months, that when her daughter said she needed to say something the right response was to stop and listen. Not to prepare an answer. Not to manage whatever was coming. Just to stop and listen.

“Okay,” she said.

Étain looked at her plate for a moment. Then she looked at her mother.

“I’m in love with Jack,” she said.

She said it the way she’d been saying important things lately — plainly, without cushioning, in the voice of someone who has decided that the truth deserves to be said straight. Not I think I might have feelings for or I’m not sure but maybe — the clean, unambiguous declaration of someone who has been sitting with something long enough to know exactly what it is.