Evelyn Luke lifted her gaze and, of course, there it was: a little photo corner in the back, staged like a dollhouse window. A handful of girls had claimed it, phones raised, photographing one another with solemn concentration and sudden squeals.
Not just there. Everywhere. The shop had been designed to be photographed—soft light, playful angles, shelf after shelf arranged like film stills.
"True," she murmured, turning away. She picked up a scented candle, held it beneath her nose for a delicate breath, then turned back and smiled at Grace Barron with a warmth that softened the edges of her face. "Anyway—you. You're… puzzling, sometimes."
Grace set a stuffed toy back on the shelf and folded her hands behind her like a schoolgirl on a museum tour. "What brought that on?"
Evelyn's eyes skimmed over Grace's features, then leisurely down to the toe of her boots. "I remember in high school, when someone asked if you liked girls, you said no."
Grace took two slow steps forward. "I was late to everything," she said. "Books and snacks, that was my brain. I didn't think about… anything else."
Evelyn's breath left her in a soundless sigh. A small, wry smile pinched one corner of her mouth.
It had been junior year. She'd been ill, in and out of the hospital, even a minor surgery that felt major from the inside. Her parents were disciplined to the bone—good people who prized excellence, who offered tutors and violin lessons and stacks of books, but not the kind of gentleness that lingers by your bedside at two a.m. The housekeeper handled the practicalities with perfect care, but care is not the same as company, and sickness makes quiet rooms ferocious. The mind, underslept, eats itself.
On a night she still remembered by the antiseptic smell alone, Grace skipped study hall and arrived carrying a bag packed with every tender, permitted thing Evelyn liked. She pushed open the door and came straight to the bed: Does it hurt? Can you eat? What sounds good? She asked as if questions could borrow the pain and carry it elsewhere.
Something in Evelyn loosened and spilled. She cried without warning, and Grace blotting her tears with the kind of gentleness you don't forget—even when you try.
Afterward, by coincidence or fate, Evelyn and a few girls in their class read a sapphic novel together. Her thoughts began to move like willow branches in early March—bare, then trembling, then full of secret green. The girls became close, spoke about everything and nothing, and one quiet afternoon one of them nudged Evelyn's shoulder and asked, "Do you think Grace likes you? I mean, the way she treats you…"
Evelyn's face burned. How could she jump to that?
The girl leaned in, conspirator's grin. "Just saying—girls who look like Grace? Eight out of ten are into girls."
After that, Evelyn met Grace with a small, private flutter in her chest. To test it, the girls conspired one weekend and dragged Grace over to watch a film with a thread of two women falling in love. Evelyn's heart beat so hard she felt it in her throat; Grace, unbothered, tracked the main plot with serious eyes as if the rest were scenery.
And when the credits rolled and someone teased Evelyn, "You'd be good at this—falling for girls," Grace said, simply, "Probably not. I don't think I feel that way about women."
A clean, flat answer. A soft slap to several faces.
In time Evelyn understood: Grace didn't harbor anything but friendship. She was kind because she was kind. It had never been a secret code.
"Right," Evelyn said now, nodding. "Then college came, and you called me out of the blue about… Jessica Brooks. You asked for tips." She let out a faint laugh. "I nearly fainted."
She had truly believed Grace would never be pulled in that direction. Then one day she was. And it wasn't Evelyn.
When Jessica dumped Grace later, the crack ran straight through her. Grace looked fine most days and then, like weather, she wasn't—spirals of panic that seemed to steal the air from her lungs. Evelyn was careful then, moving like a nurse around a sleeping child. No sudden noises. No pressure.
And here she was, this evening, married.
And what could Evelyn say? Only what you say to the sea: nothing that changes its tide.
She had long suspected they were parallel lines, destined to travel close and never meet. Not for lack of trying. Not for a tragic misunderstanding. Simply because Grace had never loved her that way. If two people are marked for each other, how do they miss every crossing?
Grace kept her eyes on the floor as they walked, the slow pace of people who had too much history to rush. After a moment she said, "My grandmother isn't doing well. I wanted to make her happy."
"Mm?" Evelyn tilted her head. "You mean you actually did it? The thing you used to say?"
Grace had once said—offhand, practical as ever—that if love never cooperated, she would just find someone and make a pact. A tidy arrangement. A life with fewer unknowns.
Grace didn't deny it.
"So the two of you are… keeping house together," Evelyn said softly. "Partners in the literal sense."
"Anyway," Grace lifted her gaze, "it's working."
Evelyn couldn't think what expression belonged on her face. She reached for the nearest scarf instead. "This one's nice."
"Get it," Grace said.
Evelyn smoothed the fabric and carried it to the counter. As the cashier scanned the tag, her thoughts went strange and loose.
If she'd known Grace wasn't joking back then—if she'd understood she was serious—she might have said yes. To the arrangement. To its quiet kind of love. She wasn't sure she had a taste for anyone else. The boyfriend had been practice at forgetting, and even that had failed her. On the loveliest days, standing beside him with a sky like porcelain above them, she'd think, If this were Grace instead. How good it would be. So she left, before her half-love rotted into unkindness.
The price chimed. Evelyn held up her phone to pay and exhaled.
"Want to look at anything else?" she asked when she returned, eyes lifted.
"I don't think so," Grace said.
"Then let's go."
They took two steps and Grace stopped, attention caught by a small plush rabbit. She thought of the rabbit Oakley liked. She thought Oakley would smile. So she bought it.
When they came out, Grace searched the street for Oakley's slim figure. Empty pavement, night pressed flat against the glass. No one.
She was reaching for her phone when a blade of wind slid under her collar and cut downward. She exhaled into the dusk.
"Cold?" Evelyn asked at once.
"A little," Grace admitted.
"It's dropped lately." Evelyn lifted the shopping bag, remembering. "Want the scarf for now?"
Grace shook her head. "It's fine. It's not that cold."
"What are you saying." Evelyn was already pulling the scarf free, the wool new and cloud-soft in her hands. She stepped close, rose onto her toes, and looped it around Grace's neck, tucking the ends with brisk, practiced fingers. "Better?"
"Much." New wool is almost indecently kind to skin; warmth sewed itself into Grace's throat at once, the chill undone.
Evelyn watched her face, but did not lower her hands.
Grace lifted her eyes, squinting past her. "Oakley?"
Evelyn's hands fell at once. She stepped aside and turned.
Oakley Ponciano was walking toward them with one hand in her pocket and a small paper sack in the other. Inside, a tumble of clementines glowed—round, golden, the color of late afternoons. She had the look of someone coming back from a short, private errand.
"Fruit?" Grace asked, moving to her. "You disappeared on me."
Oakley seemed to return to herself by degrees. "Yeah."
"I was about to call," Grace said, stopping in front of her. "Thought someone had carried you off."
"Please." Oakley's eyes fixed, not on Grace's face, but on the scarf at her throat. "I'm a whole adult woman. Not easily snatched."
Something in her tone rang off. Grace heard it and frowned. "What's wrong? You seem… off."
Not just her voice. The air around her.
"Nothing." Oakley flicked a glance toward a parked car and composed a lie with offhand ease. "Argued with my mom."
"Argued?" Grace tried to imagine it and failed.
"Mhm." Oakley noticed Evelyn standing near them now.
She forced a smile open, reached into the bag, and held a clementine out to Evelyn with careful politeness. "Want one? The shopkeeper swore they were a local treasure. Pretty sweet."
Evelyn's brows lifted. She accepted it. "Thanks."
Oakley shook her head. She reached in again—her movements stiff—and offered one to Grace. "You?"
Grace studied her for a second, then reached out. "Thank you."
Something in Oakley snapped. A small, hot thread, finally pulled too tight.
"Thank you, thank you," she said, the words bitter with a brightness that wasn't joy. "Thank you for what? Is this the first day we've met?"
A beat of stunned quiet.
Evelyn had handed Grace water at the table, had wound the new scarf around her throat with fingers that had known their way for years, and Grace hadn't said thank you either time. Not out loud. Not like this.
Because Evelyn was "hers," perhaps. And Oakley—what was Oakley? The wife by arrangement, deserving of courtesy and distance?
For a second both Grace and Evelyn just stared at her, caught out in the raw glare of the moment, as if someone had thrown a door open in winter and every warm, rehearsed line flew away with the heat.