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  She hung up before I could even ask her what show she meant. The fact I had no idea proved all the more how much had changed since I’d left home. And that was a good thing, I reminded myself as I disconnected the call and set the timer on the oven. The last few months between my decision to take the job in Harrisburg and move out on my own and the day I’d moved had been horrible.

  Most mothers and daughters I knew had weathered their share of arguments. Daughters had to grow away from their moms. To go to school. Move out. Become women. I’d become a woman under my mom’s watchful, too-protective eye, and had chafed at it even as I knew I had no choice. When my doctor had declared me seizure-free for more than a year and thus able to drive, instead of getting better, my mom’s concerns had grown worse. I didn’t blame her for them. I understood why she was so nervous. I’d been effectively disabled by the injury to my brain, and there was no cure. Only treatment. Only fingers crossed and prayers said. Only hope.

  Even so, it had been unbearable living at home for those few months after I accepted the new job and before I was able to settle on and move into my house. She’d hovered, scolded and worried me nearly to madness. We’d fought harder and longer than we ever had during my adolescence. There’d been more than one night when I went to bed fuming and woke still angry, and I’m sure she felt the same way. She was afraid to let me go, and I was afraid of never being able to stand on my own. Now, here in the house I could only afford because of all the years I’d lived rent-free when my friends had been paying out to landlords, I wanted to call my mom back and tell her how sorry I was for being so snotty every time she’d worried about me.

  Instead, I licked cookie dough straight off the spoon and dared salmonella to find me. It tasted extra good for being licked in defiance of everything my mom had ever told me, and because I knew I really shouldn’t eat cookie dough when my pants were already a little too snug. I was a rebel with a spoon.

  By the time the cookies finished baking my kitchen smelled gorgeous and my stomach felt a little queasy. I sipped at some ginger ale and laid the cookies out on a pretty plate I’d picked up at the Salvation Army for a dime. It had roses on it and gold around the rim, and I could’ve sold it on eBay for a hundred times what I’d bought it for. It was another example of my thrift-store theory. I’d gone in looking specifically for house-wares to stock my new house and found an entire box of mismatched but complementary plates for ten cents apiece.

  I had plenty of plates. I could give this one up. On the other hand, it was pretty enough that anyone who got a plateful of cookies on it might feel compelled to make sure he returned it to me.

  I could be so sneaky sometimes.

  Chapter 08

  “Hi—” The rest of my sentence cut off as Johnny’s door opened and didn’t reveal Johnny.

  The older woman stared at me for a long moment, a sour look on her face. When at last she spoke, it was with a shake of her head. “You here for him, I guess.”

  “Um, Johnny Dellasandro?”

  “That’s who lives here, ain’t?” Her thick Pennsylvania Dutch accent sounded out of place here in the “big city,” though I’d heard it plenty back home. “You’d better come in.”

  I stepped over the threshold and wiped my boots carefully on the mat, not wanting to drip dirty snow water on his beautiful floors again. I held my chin and the plate of cookies high. I’d covered them with some festive red plastic wrap I’d bought reduced after Christmas.

  The woman looked at them, then at me. “You made these for him?”

  “I did. Is he here?”

  “He likes chocolate chip cookies.” She smiled then, and it transformed her from grumpy gnome into beaming fairy godmother. “Come on back the hall, wunst. He’s upstairs doing something arty. I’ll get him for you.”

  “Thanks.” My stomach in knots, I followed her to the kitchen.

  She opened what in my house was a closet, but here turned out to be a set of back stairs, and hollered up them. “Johnny!”

  Her voice echoed, but nobody answered. She looked at me, still standing in my buttoned-up coat, plate of cookies in my hands. She shrugged.

  “Johnny Dellasandro!”

  No answer. She sighed and heaved herself onto the bottom stair, which jutted out at a forty-five-degree angle from the staircase. She put her hand on the door frame and leaned out of sight, then screamed his name so loudly I took a step back.

  “That’ll get him,” she said with a nod and a grin, and dusted her hands as though she’d just finished a particularly difficult task. “When he’s working it’s like his ears get filled with cotton.”

  “I don’t want to disturb him.” He’d already made a practice of giving me the stink eye. If I took him away from his art, I could only imagine the reaction I’d get.

  She flapped her hands. “Pshaw. He’s been working all day long. He needs a break. And some cookies from a pretty girl.”

  I smiled. “I don’t want to interrupt, that’s all.”

  We both turned at the thud of footsteps on the stairs. I saw his feet first, bare toes. My own toes curled. Then the hem of a pair of faded jeans, hem ragged. Then Johnny stepped onto the last step and paused in the doorway. He looked perplexed.

  “Whatchoo shoutin’ fooah?”

  Fuck me, I loved that accent.

  “You have comp’ny. For mercy’s sake, Johnny, put a shirt on!” The woman sighed and put her hands on her hips, shaking her head.

  Not on my account, I thought, trying hard not to stare and not sure exactly where to look if it wasn’t at those delicious nipples. Fuck, his abs were hard, too. He might not be young, but he was still superfit and in better shape than some of the younger dudes I’d been with.

  “Hi,” I said, relieved my voice didn’t shake or catch. I couldn’t do anything about the blush, but hoped my cheeks simply looked rosy from the cold and not from embarrassment.

  Johnny stared at me. The woman looked from him to me, then back, and sighed. She took the plate of cookies from my hands and held it up to him.

  “She brought you cookies, dummkopf. You,” she said to me, “take off your coat and sit yourself.”

  Her tone showed she was used to being obeyed, but I waited until he stepped off the stairs and all the way into the kitchen before I sat. I didn’t take off my coat, though. Johnny, casting a glance over his shoulder at me, crossed to another door that did prove to be a closet, where he hooked a hooded sweatshirt off the back and put it on. I mourned a little but was relieved at the same time. I was less distracted that way.

  “Now, I’m off, finally. Your dinner’s still in the oven and your groceries are all put away. I left your bills on the desk and your other mail in the basket,” the woman said.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Espenshade.”

  She flapped her hands again. “It’s what you pay me for, ain’t? Now I’m leaving and I’ll be back on Friday to take care of the cleaning. Don’t forget now.”

  “I’ll be here,” Johnny said, looking at me.

  “I don’t care if you’re here or not. Maybe you should be away, then I could get more done.” She chortled at that and shook her head again. She patted my shoulder as she passed me. “Don’t let him eat them all by himself.”

  “Good night, Mrs. Espenshade,” Johnny called after her, but her only reply was the slamming of the front door.

  “Hi,” I said again into the painful silence that followed. “I brought cookies. Chocolate chip. They’re homemade.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re better.” I smiled.

  He didn’t. He didn’t open them, either. Nor did he sit. Johnny stood against the counter, arms crossed over his chest.

  I was too warm in the kitchen with my coat on, my scarf tucked tight around my throat. I didn’t dare unwind it, though. Mrs. Espenshade might’ve welcomed me in, but Johnny definitely wasn’t.

  “I mean, why’d you bring me cookies?”

  “To say thank you for helping me out the other day.