As I straightened, a fast-paced song blaring in my ears, someone tapped my shoulder, and I yelped. The eggs dropped to the floor and splattered across my bare feet, globs of the whites squishing between my toes.

“Sorry,” Nick said when I pulled out the earbuds. “I knocked, but…”

My heart hammered in my throat, and I was having a hard time catching my breath. I shoved the refrigerator door shut and collapsed against it, bringing my hand up to my forehead, shielding my eyes.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I didn’t hear you, is all.” I held up the earbuds by way of explanation. “I just need a second.”

He went to the end of the peninsula and leaned into it, arms folded across his chest as he waited.

I kept telling myself not to freak out. Do not freak out.

When my hand fluttered at my mouth as if to quiet the ragged gasps coming out of my throat, I inhaled and caught the scent of my Hope oil mix. I’d dabbed it on my wrists this morning after my shower, and the smell reminded me of my normal life, the life I was desperately trying to have.

It reminded me of Nick, too, and that Nick was here, and I was in my own home, and I was safe.

Nervous chills made my shoulders shake, but my breathing slowed and my heartbeat returned to normal. Another panic attack diverted. Dr. Sedwick would be proud.

“Are you good?” Nick asked, his voice even and husky, but his eyes pinched with concern—an expression I hadn’t seen on him before.

I nodded. “I’m good.” I grabbed a towel from the cupboard and wetted it as Nick cleaned up the broken eggshells, scooping up as much of the guts as he could. I knelt on the floor next to him.

“I thought you were going to sleep in.”

“I was.”

“But?”

“But… I couldn’t sleep.”

I started to ask if something was wrong, but his jaw tensed and he said, so hoarsely I’d have sworn he had a cold, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.”

We finished cleaning up the eggs in silence and stood at the kitchen sink together, washing our hands. The daylight pouring through the window accentuated Nick’s blue eyes and the shadows spreading beneath them.

“I was going to make French toast,” I said. “We can eat here in the house, instead of the carriage house, if you want.”

He nodded. “Would you like me to help?”

I thought about it, about cooking with him next to me, watching him crack open an egg, pour in the milk. Seeing him perform such domestic tasks might be amusing. After all, his hands looked more used to making fists than cracking eggs. But I got the feeling he was only asking to be polite.

“I can manage on my own. You can just hang out and relax.”

A lock of hair fell across his forehead as he nodded again and settled in at the table.

We ate in silence. The more I got to know Nick, the more I realized the real him, the Nick he didn’t show often, was the quiet one. I liked silence, too, and it was a rare quality to find in other people. Most can’t stand the empty pauses, as if they can’t bear to be alone with their own thoughts.

I’d spent six months locked in a single room, but really I’d spent those months locked in my own head. Silence was familiar, like an old friend.

When we finished eating, I cleared our dishes, but decided to put them in the dishwasher later so I could follow Nick into the living room. He took his time circling the room, examining the things on the wall, the pictures on the mantel. He paused at a picture of my mother hanging above one of Aggie’s old sideboards.

“Who is that?” he asked. He frowned at the picture, as if he were trying to figure out the identity of the woman without the benefit of my explanation.

“That’s my mom.”

I wondered if he saw the similarities between us. The dark wavy hair. The big green eyes. The nose that seemed too small for its face.

We were so similar in appearance, but so different on all other levels. My mom was smart, the kind of smart that won awards and titles and memberships in special clubs. She was one of the top doctors at Cosmell Medical Center. She was determined in everything and ambitious, too.

My favorite thing about her, though, was her spontaneity, the way she’d come up with something and act on it moments later, damn the consequences. When I was little, she was always pulling me from one thing to another. Out of ballet, into gymnastics, out of school, to the ice cream shop.

One night, after it’d been raining for two full days, she crept into my room at midnight, shook me awake, and handed me a raincoat and rubber boots that looked like ladybugs.

“Come on,” she whispered in the dark, pressing a finger to her lips. “This is our little secret.”

It was always like that, secrets between us, adventures kept from my father, the man who was the opposite of spontaneity, devoted as he was to his schedule.

I dressed quickly. I couldn’t help but be swept up in her excitement when she was like that, as if we were always on some grand mission.

Mom took my hand and hurried me down the hallway, out the back door, and into the backyard. The night was dark, the stars and moon blotted out by the rain clouds. There was one lone light in the yard—a battery-powered lantern that Mom had hung from the big cherry tree. It cast golden light that glittered on the puddles that had gathered in furrows.

Mom squeezed my hand tighter and twirled me around like a ceramic ballerina in a jewelry box. The rain was warm and slow, as if it wanted to take its time disappearing into the soil beneath our feet. It clung to Mom’s hair in fat droplets and ran down her cheeks like sweat.