In the time it took him to walk from the truck to the back door, snow had gathered in his hair. Along his jacket.
The warmth of the Riverview kitchen enveloped him the way it always did, like arms coming around him. The smell of coffee, lasagna, and bread didn’t hurt.
“If you’re looking for the kids you just missed them,” Alice said, wiping off the last of her big baking trays and putting it in the rack beside the oven.
“I’m guessing you mean Cameron and Josie?”
She smiled, one side of her mouth lifting as much with bitterness as with joy. “Coffee?”
“Sure.”
“Lasagna?”
“For breakfast?”
“Like you don’t want it.”
He pulled out one of the stools at the island and sat. Alice poured him a cup and brought him a slab of lasagna that practically hung over the edges of the plate. He picked up his fork but couldn’t quite find the will to eat it.
“You all right?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “ You?”
“I spent the morning cooking with Cameron. I didn’t think that would ever happen again.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t suppose you did.” They sat in silence.
“You have something you want to get off your chest?” she asked him.
“Do you?” he shot back.
She poured herself the last of the coffee and sat down at the island beside him.
“We handled that night all wrong,” he said. Alice nodded.
She swallowed, so clearly carrying such a load on her shoulders. He’d grown used to living with women after so many years of just him and his brother and dad, and he knew the therapeutic importance of hugs.
But Alice wasn’t a hugger.
He covered her hand with his and she immediately grabbed him, holding on tight.
“They loved each other.”
“I know.”
“A real and honest love.”
Shit. “I know.”
“And even if it never became anything more, they deserved a chance to have that first real love. That first love is how you learn to love. And how you learn who you are in love. And how to live inside it. And we…we took that away from them.”
“We broke up their friendship. And they needed each other,” he said. “Josie…I feel like Josie has been so alone since he left.”
“And it feels like Cameron has just put everything that happened before he left…away. We started a five questions interview yesterday and I brought up his mom and it was like…” She shook her head. “…I’d smacked him.”
“I asked for his help last night and he said he wasn’t my employee anymore.”
“He may never forgive us.”
“But what about Josie?”
“They left here together to deliver the food.”
“They did?” In his chest he felt a flicker of hope. He had a lot of reasons to both trust and distrust hope. It was fickle and could turn on a person on a dime. But if he’d learned anything in these years with Delia, making a family, building a home, it was that if you didn’t have hope—even when you feared its eventual extinction—you had nothing.
“They were smiling.”
He blew out a breath. “That’s something.”
“Let’s not start congratulating ourselves yet. We still have a mess to clean up.”
JOSIE
There was always a lot of mayhem at Haven House. And even though the school and offices were officially on break, there were a lot of families there.
A lot of kids.
And it was like Christmas had barfed all over the place. Kids’ drawings and paper chains and holiday lights covered every square inch of wall.
“I forgot about this part!” Josie said as she and Helen and Cameron carried food into the dining room while kids rushed by. She lifted a tray of lasagna up so it didn’t bean a kid in the head.
“Hold up!” Daniella, an older Black woman who was once a resident and was now the day-to-day manager of the kitchen, stopped the kids at the end of the hallway. “You turn yourselves around and go help them bring in the food.”
The kids turned, faces beaming, and started running back toward them. “Walk!” Daniella shouted, and the kids immediately slowed down.
“That is a superpower,” Cameron murmured.
“Oh, it smells so good,” Daniella said. “Bring it in. Bring it on in.”
They stepped into the kitchen, which was a larger version of the one in the Riverview since the remodel a few years ago. It looked big enough to hold all the cooking classes it could run.
They set down the lasagna and the kids came running in after them with foil-wrapped loaves of bread in their arms.
Helen brought up the rear with the salad. “There’s still more in the van.”
Cameron and Josie walked out of the kitchen and into the hall, their shoulders bumping each other, and Josie shifted away, suddenly self-conscious, and stepped behind him.
“You okay?” he asked.
Just completely and totally in my own head and making a fool of myself. “Just fine!” she said over-brightly, deeply rattled by what had happened in the truck. He shot her a quizzical grin and opened the door to the snowy cold outside. They brought in the last of the food. And Helen and Daniella were strategizing in the kitchen, figuring out the timeline for dinner and delivery to the church.
“Are we going to deliver food in town?” Cameron asked.
“The roads are too bad,” Daniella said. “We’re gonna feed everyone here tonight and hopefully deliver tomorrow.”
Cameron nodded, though he was undoubtedly imagining what Alice would have to say about the shape her salads would be in by the next day.
“But don’t you worry,” Daniella said with a bright twinkle in her eyes. She was the kind of short woman who always seemed taller on account of all her personality and power. “I’ve got a job for you.”
“Wrapping,” Cameron said. “I knew it.”
“It won’t be that bad,” Josie said, reaching over to push on his arm.
“You know, you say that every time, and every time it is paper-cut city.”
“Well, come on,” Daniella said, leading them from the kitchen down another hall to the meeting room that always got taken over for presents and wrapping.
“You coming?” Josie asked Helen over her shoulder.
Helen shook her head, a smile teasing her lips. “I think you two have it covered.”
Josie stepped back into the kitchen.
“Don’t,” she said in a low voice.
“Don’t what?” Helen asked innocently.
“Don’t be too pleased with yourself,” Josie said. “This could have gone another way entirely.” She thought of Max and Cameron, and the tension between them, and the tension she still had with Alice. “It still could.”
Helen sobered. “You should have been friends all this time. I was just trying to make something that was really wrong a little bit right.”
Yeah. Josie knew that. And, frankly, she was glad her friend had staged this reunion. Whatever happened next. Seeing him again was so sweet. “Thanks,” she said, squeezing her friend’s hand. “It is really good to see him.”